On 4 September 2013 17:20, Carl Meyer <c...@oddbird.net> wrote: > On 09/04/2013 07:27 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote: >> I was under the impression pip *already* forced the use of setuptools >> (to ensure "--record" is available) > > Sidenote, and already mentioned by MAL upthread, but --record is a > distutils feature, not a setuptools feature, so this is not the reason > pip forces setuptools.
My apologies. That was me spreading that misinformation. I have no idea where I got it from, but I've just checked and distutils at least back to Python 2.5 has this features. And to compound my error, I have certainly said this on multiple occasions :-( Next time I'll check my facts more carefully. > I think the actual reason is so that pip can have a uniform way to > access metadata (including dependency metadata that only setuptools has) > by running "setup.py egg-info", which is setuptools-only. (It also means > pip can install everything with the same installed format, including the > .egg-info metadata directory). Actually, there is an install_egg_info command available in distutils, also back to at least Python 2.5. For some reason, it's not displayed by setup.py --help-commands, but it is there nevertheless. Paul. _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig