On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 3:44 AM, Antonio Cavallo <a.cava...@cavallinux.eu> wrote:
> Here few lesson learnt using rpm and python at fairly large scale > (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/cavallo71:/opt-python-interpreters) > project of mine I wish could be of some help in thinking of a "packaging > system". > (I'm totally happy with the old-pain setup.py and I see no need to switch to > anything else). I agree that setup.py should be replaced and that Python packaging should be better in various ways, but I think the process of replacing the build system should take 5-10 years. I do not want to fork the 27 working dependencies of my simplest project by rewriting their setup.py and replacing any "import pkg_resources" with a different API. Instead, I will use binary packaging to forget about the build system at install time and to install much more quickly, and if setup.py is a problem, at least it's a problem less often (because 'install' is a much more common operation than 'build'). If it becomes necessary, I (or someone) will re-implement the most used parts of the pkg_resources API with a different back end. The strategy has nothing to do with liking or disliking the existing popular APIs. It is only because it takes less time than debugging and maintaining forks of my dependencies due to a subtly incompatible new build system. (If the new build system was not incompatible, it would not be able to improve on setuptools and distutils.) Eventually everyone will realize that we should be building with Bento, and we will get better APIs that do what pkg_resources does without confusing people with a very long single source file and the new systems will become preferred. In the meantime there is going to be more than one way to do it for a long time. _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig