[Python-Dev] API for the new sysconfig module (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sun Dec 12 15:05:44 CET 2010

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 11:42 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

I really like that much better than Java-like accessor functions. Do you actually use sysconfig yourself? It's quite a specialized module, and I don't think API elegance arguments have a great weight here.

I would also like those advocating replacement of a tried and tested API with "oh, you can just use a single function for it" to rewrite distutils2 and the other tools that currently used distutils.sysconfig based on their "single function" approach before anything gets touched.

This is not an API that was invented on a whim. It is well-established, with existing use cases that are essential to the wider Python ecosystem, and are more easily managed on some Linux distributions if they don't involve a dependency on distutils. Proposing to throw it away in favour of an ill-defined single function that indiscriminately mixes system data with metadata about that data because some people that don't even use the module find it aesthetically displeasing seems... unwise.

Regards, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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