I don't think anyone loves distutils, or even likes it. Unfortunately replacing it will be very tough, because distutils has arcane but important knowledge built into it about many platforms, and a new from-scratch system is unlikely to reach that level of coverage for years. There's also the issue that it's not enough to roll out the replacement with a new version of Python -- it would leave everyone using the old distutils in the lurch. It's a prime example of the network effect: until everyone owns one, nobody will want to own one. The best strategy I can think of would be to gradually rewrite the existing distutils, remaining compatible but also offering new APIs, and 5 years hence maybe the installed base will be close enough to 100% that developers writing setup scripts will start using the new features. That's how AJAX conquered the world.
--Guido On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 10:18 AM, Blake Winton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Just as a question, is there _any_ chance of a new project to replace > distutils being accepted into Python? > > Thanks, > Blake. > > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: [Distutils] Annoucing distribute project > Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:55:36 -0400 > From: Jim Fulton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Andreas Jung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > CC: [email protected] > References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > On Sep 25, 2008, at 12:46 PM, Andreas Jung wrote: > >> >> >> --On 25. September 2008 12:31:40 -0400 "Phillip J. Eby" >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: >> >> >>> Personally, I would rather see not a "fork", but development of an >>> entirely new disutils replacement, and then not worry at all about >>> backward compatibility at the setup.py level. Apart from the >>> pkg_resources module, I would treat setuptools and distutils as legacy >>> infrastructure, and explore better ways to build and manage >>> distributions >>> (including eggs). >> >> We can not restart with something completely different or new. Such an >> approach would be totally unacceptable due to the huge amount of existing >> modules having switched to setuptools. Setuptools or an improved codefork >> must be the tools for managing distibutions in Python. > > I would be willing to start with something new if and only if it was > adopted as part of Python. > > Jim > > -- > Jim Fulton > Zope Corporation > > > _______________________________________________ > Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig > > -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
