On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 8:54 PM, PJ Eby <[email protected]> wrote: > Jason Coombs (head of the Distribute project) and I are working on > merging the bulk of the improvements distribute made into the > setuptools code base. He has volunteered to take over maintenance of > setuptools, and I welcome his assistance. I appreciate the > contributions made by the distribute maintainers over the years, and > am glad to have Jason's help in getting those contributions into > setuptools as well. Continuing to keep the code bases separate isn't > helping anybody, and as setuptools moves once again into active > development to deal with the upcoming shifts in the Python-wide > packaging infrastructure (the new PEPs, formats, SSL, TUF, etc.), it > makes sense to combine efforts. > > Aside from the problems experienced by people with one package that > are fixed in the other, the biggest difficulties with the fork right > now are faced by the maintainers of setuptools-driven projects like > pip, virtualenv, and buildout, who have to either take sides in a > conflict, or spend additional time and effort testing and integrating > with both setuptools and distribute. We'd like to end that pain and > simplify matters for end users by bringing distribute enhancements to > setuptools and phasing out the distribute fork as soon as is > practical. > > In the short term, our goal is to consolidate the projects to prevent > duplication, wasted effort, and incompatibility, so that we can start > moving forward. This merge will allow us to combine resources and > teams, so that we may focus on a stable but actively-maintained > toolset. In the longer term, the goal is for setuptools as a concept > to become obsolete. For the first time, the Python packaging world > has gotten to a point where there are PEPs *and implementations* for > key parts of the packaging infrastructure that offer the potential to > get rid of setuptools entirely. (Vinay Sajip's work on distlib, > Daniel Holth's work on the "wheel" format, and Nick Coghlan's taking > up the reins of the packaging PEPs and providing a clear vision for a > new way of doing things -- these are just a few of the developments in > recent play.) > > "Obsolete", however, doesn't mean unmaintained or undeveloped. In > fact, for the "new way of doing things" to succeed, setuptools will > need a lot of new features -- some small, some large -- to provide a > migration path. > > At the moment, the merge is not yet complete. We are working on a > common repository where the two projects' history has been spliced > together, and are cleaning up the branch heads to facilitate > re-merging them. We'd hoped to have this done by PyCon, but there > have been a host of personal, health, and community issues consuming > much of our available work time. But we decided to go ahead and make > an announcement *now*, because with the big shifts taking place in the > packaging world, there are people who need to know about the upcoming > merge in order to make the best decisions about their own projects > (e.g. pip, buildout, etc.) and to better support their own users. > > Thank you once again to all the distribute contributors, for the many > fine improvements you've made to the setuptools package over the > years, and I hope that you'll continue to make them in the future. > (Especially as I begin to phase myself out of an active role in the > project!) > > I now want to turn the floor over to Jason, who's put together a > Roadmap/FAQ for what's going to be happening with the project going > forward. We'll then both be here in the thread to address any > questions or concerns you might have.
Quick question regarding open issues on Distribute (of which I have a handful assigned to me, and of which I intend to tackle a few others): Would it it make sense to just hold off on those until the merge is completed? Also is there anything I can do to help with the merge? How is that coming along? Erik _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
