Paul Ganssle <p.gans...@gmail.com> added the comment:

> So what is the plan to continue to support building cpython itself which 
> depends on Distutils? Currently the build bootstraps itself without the aid 
> of an existing Python interpreter instance. There would also be major impacts 
> across the whole cpython development process.

My understanding was that the plan was to move the standard library distutils 
into a private module somewhere in the standard library and presumably to slim 
it down to only the bare minimum required for what is necessary to build Python 
itself. We're really only concerned with the use of distutils to build packages.

> For example, there are many open Distutils issues in the bugs.python.org bug 
> tracker. We need a plan on how those are to be handled (and that should take 
> into account the expected transition from b.p.o to GitHub issues).  People 
> will continue to submit issues agains Distutils there so triage team members 
> and core developers need to know how to handle such issues. What if an issue 
> applies also or only to a previous release branch (i.e. where Distutils is 
> still in the repo)?

As far as I can tell we've already been telling people that issues in distutils 
should be fixed in setuptools instead for a few years. I don't think anything 
needs to be done about the currently open distutils tickets before we 
*deprecate* distutils, though during the deprecation period we'll probably want 
to decide whether we want to migrate them, do a mass closure or just leave them 
to be ad hoc closed as people stumble upon them later. Mass closure may be 
complicated because tickets affecting CPython itself will still need to be 
addressed.

> What about Distutils documentation in the Python docset?  THose are just some 
> off the top of my head.

The distutils documentation is already basically just a warning page that says 
"stop using distutils": 
https://docs.python.org/3/library/distutils.html#module-distutils

Before these reference materials are removed from the docs we'll need to make 
sure that all the stuff that's still supported is documented on the setuptools 
side.

> I don't think any of these issues are necessarily blockers but they need to 
> be planned for and reviewed.  I think a PEP is definitely in order for a 
> change of this magnitude.

A PEP may be a good idea, but I do think the change doesn't have a particularly 
large magnitude. Anyone using setuptools or pip has already been getting 
setuptools' monkey-patched version of distutils for ages now, and soon they 
will be getting setuptools' vendored version. The documentation already 
indicates that distutils is at least soft-deprecated in favor of setuptools and 
we've already been directing issues and PRs to setuptools instead of distutils. 
This last piece is really formalizing something we've been incrementally 
working towards for a long time now. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it carefully 
and with a lot of notice, but it's also not a sudden and massive shift.

----------
nosy: +p-ganssle

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