The discussion of Sylvain's proposed changes to distutils suggests that there isn't a clear-cut agreement or position of this SIG -- and thus Python -- on changes to distutils, its future, etc. Is there an official position I'm not aware of? If not, could we get one so we know how to handle any more proposed changes to distutils?
For me personally (and to start this conversation if necessary), I view distutils as the package in the stdlib that handles building extension modules in the stdlib for Python. That view means that if something doesn't service that explicit goal then it shouldn't go into distutils. Now that we are moving down the road towards making the build step configurable I'm fine with saying that distutils is not expected to work for people other than Python itself and others can use setuptools, enscons, or other projects while we continue to improve the situation to where the build system is just something you specify in pyproject.toml to generate your wheel. IOW distutils is only exposed publicly because Python doesn't hide anything, but making it useful for the general case of direct usage by people is a non-goal of the package.
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