Switching python-setuptools source to distribute

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Greetings all, this is mostly for the python packagers amongst you.
In recent yesrs many python packages have come to rely on the setuptools
module to build and install (and for some it's a runtime requirement as
well).  However, setuptools development is really a one-man show where that
one man has been a bottleneck for development and bug fixing of the code.

So, after many years of complaints and sporadic setuptools releases, a fork
of the project named distribute was created.  This fork installs into the
same module name as the current setuptools package and the same API,
transparently replacing it.  It has an active group of core committers and
has made several releases over the past few months.  The lead on the project
is also the new distutils maintainer in the pyhton stdlib and has expressed
interest in making packaging python modules more compliant with the needs of
Linux distributions (although the present release series aims to maintain
compatiblity with setuptools, so there's only so much that can be done
there.)

Since setuptools is such a widely used module I'm wondering how other
distributions are choosing to package setuptools/this fork.  From a message
on the distutils-sig mailing list I'm lead to believe that Gentoo's latest
setuptools packages are distribute-based.  I've just done the same for the
development package in Fedora 13 (over six months away).  Are other
distributions moving in the same direction?  Going to stick with the
setuptools upstream?  Work on making a parallel installable version?  Or
leaving it entirely up to their setuptools packager to make the decision?

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/distribute

-Toshio
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/distributions/attachments/20091015/a70e4240/attachment.pgp