Re: to distribute_setup() or not, that is the question

[Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org>]

On Jan 27, 2012, at 05:43 PM, Brian Sutherland wrote:

>On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 11:16:02AM -0500, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>> On Jan 27, 2012, at 03:38 PM, Brian Sutherland wrote:
>> 
>> >On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 08:36:40AM -0500, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>> >> What if we proposed a hook to get DEFAULT_VERSION from a file or environment
>> >> variable?  Then at least on Debian systems we could provide that file in our
>> >> python-setuptools package, or set the envar in our d/rules files?  I'd
>> >> probably prefer the former since it would allow us to specify the default
>> >> version for the majority of Python packages.  The two aren't mutually
>> >> exclusive, but I'm not sure both would be useful.
>> >
>> >I'm not sure it's more useful than just setting DEFAULT_VERSION to a
>> >very old version. It's certainly more complex.
>> 
>> Yes, but it would allow us to "solve" this once, globally, rather than
>> patching every upstream package that uses distribute_setup.py.  We can't
>> control what upstreams do, but if we could make it easier to adhere to our
>> own policies without patching upstream, all the better.
>
>Hmm, I thought my solution would ""solve" this problem once globally" :)
>
>But I realize that I was quite imprecise in my comment about DEFAULT_VERSION,
>I think use_setuptools should do this kind of thing:
>
>    DEFAULT_VERSION="0.6c11"
>    MIN_ACCEPTABLE_VERSION='0.6b1' # very very old version with
>                                   # hopefully not too many bugx
>
>    def use_setuptools(version=MIN_ACCEPTABLE_VERSION):
>        if setuptools_installed:
>            if installed_setuptools_version < version:
>                download(DEFAULT_VERSION)
>        else:
>            download(DEFAULT_VERSION)
>
>Currently MIN_ACCEPTABLE_VERSION=DEFAULT_VERSION according to
>http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py.
>
>As I understand it, your suggestion is to allow Debian systems to
>override MIN_ACCEPTABLE_VERSION. I don't think that's necessary to
>"solve" the problem if the default for MIN_ACCEPTABLE_VERSION is
>sufficiently old.

Hi Brian.  What I meant by "globally" was to avoid having to patch any
distribute_setup.py or even setup.py in every upstream package itself.
If use_setuptools() could consult some file or environment variable that was
within the domain of the operating system, that would avoid having to patch
every package that uses distribute_setup.py (or ez_setup.py).

Cheers,
-Barry