[Python-Dev] What to do about PEP 229?

[Guido van Rossum]

> >Why not parse Setup and use it as input to distutils setup.py ?
> 
> That was option 1.  The existing Setup format doesn't really contain
> enough intelligence, though; the intelligence is usually in comments
> such as "Uncomment the following line for Solaris".  So either the
> Setup format is modified (bad, since we'd break existing 3rd-party
> packages that still use a Makefile.pre.in), or I give up and just do
> everything in a setup.py.

Forget Setup.  Convert it and be done with it.  There really isn't
enough there to hang on to.  We'll support Setup format (through the
makesetup script and the Misc/Makefile.pre.in file) for 3rd party b/w
compatibility, but we won't need to use it ourselves.  (Too bad for
3rd party documentation that describes the Setup format. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)