On Monday, 3 June 2024 16:27:29 CEST Donald Stufft wrote: > > In the interim the packaging toolchain evolved to the point that having > distutils in the stdlib was no longer of general benefit, and in fact made > things worse because people had grown accustomed to things like `from > distutils import setup` being transparently monkeypatched to be setuptools > under the covers.
The way that distutils could not be relied upon to behave in a sensible way is entirely the fault of the developer(s) of setuptools having free rein to corrupt the Python packaging stack. In environments where I wanted to install to a particular location only the software I had already acquired, which is largely what the deployment element involved in distribution packaging can be reduced to, I did not want to be dealing with setuptools when distutils would do, nor with random hacks introduced to make distutils behave like setuptools. For a while, I routinely stripped out unnecessary setuptools references from setup.py files, put distutils support back in, and mostly got the desired effect. But in the Python world, once someone teases some fancy new features and they catch on, everybody else has to hold on for the wild ride and budget for the consequences. (For some software I have been trying to package, I see now that there is no setup.py or anything else, with some more "magic" introduced to be processed by yet another tool. I apparently have to get with it, or something to that effect, which severely diminishes my interest in packaging that software at all. The outcome actually affects the Debian project directly, not that very many people seem to care, however.) I suppose it also didn't help that distutils entered the standard library in the era where it was apparently acceptable to get one's code included and to then declare the job done. Back when Python 3 was initially introduced, I suggested that the standard library be reviewed and fixed up, especially since there was going to be a compatibility break anyway, but there was no appetite for it. Still, I appreciate you engaging with this forum, even if it probably means having to defend decisions made by others. Paul
