[Python-Dev] Distutils ML wrap-up: setup.cfg new format (original) (raw)

P.J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Wed Sep 23 22:47:34 CEST 2009

At 07:00 PM 9/23/2009 +0200, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

While it's great to have Philipp being part of our distutils design discussions, for his experience, I am not concerned of not having him in this "internal consensus" since Setuptools is not maintained anymore.

He said some months ago, he would work on a brand new setuptools version with zero dependency to distutils. But it's still vaporware (from his own words), and the previous version is unmaintained for a year, so it was forked.

Here's what actually happened, if anyone cares. Tarek and friends announced a fork of setuptools. I reviewed the work and saw that -- for the most part -- I was happy with it, and opined as how I might be willing to bless the the "package inquisition" team as official maintainers of the 0.6 branch of setuptools, so that I could work on the fun bits I've long planned for 0.7, but never felt free to start on while there was so much still needing to be done on 0.6.

However, just as I mentioned this, and suggested an option for what I could do that would be helpful to his Distribute 0.7 project as well as various other tools (e.g. implementing some of Jim Fulton's long-requested features for better modularization of setuptools), Tarek accused me of somehow trying to undermine his plans.

In addition, it appears Tarek was also offended by my earlier statement that there were only a few people in the Python community who had already earned my implicit trust to not only hack on setuptools unsupervised, but also to take over its future direction and BDFL-ship. (For example, Jim Fulton and Ian Bicking.)

Tarek, however, appears to have taken this to mean that I personally thought he was an incompetent programmer or something (when I actually had no opinion one way or the other), and ever since he has taken to levelling potshots like the above at me on a semi-regular basis.

I've tried to ignore this and play nice, because he is actually working on this stuff and I am not. But it's hard for me to actually give any help in practice, if Tarek is too busy projecting hidden plots onto everything I say and do.

If you read Tarek's distutils-sig posts, it appears my already-existing trust in Ian and Jim was not only a personal insult to Tarek, but also a plot to ensure that nobody with any time to do so would ever work on setuptools, just as my excitement about working on setuptools again was a plot to steal thunder from his fork.

All I want is for good stuff to happen for setuptools users and Python users in general, so I don't think all the suspicion and backbiting is merited. I certainly don't appreciate it, and I would like it to stop. It also isn't even relevant to the thread, since my lack of work on setuptools says exactly zero about the merits or lack thereof of Tarek's proposals for the distutils!

Hell, I support the bulk of Tarek's setup.cfg proposal, and don't even object to him Pronouncing it or cutting off the discussion! My only issue on Python-Dev was his inaccurate implication that it was a SIG consensus rather than a pronouncement on it. There is and was no need for any of this to get personal, and I have continually strived to keep my posts here and distutils-sig civil, even when I didn't feel like being civil in response to Tarek's jabs. I have in fact bent over backwards to be nice to Tarek, because he seemed so damn sensitive about everything. Apparently, however, this does not actually help things. :-(

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