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The same people removed distutils, which is why at my company we had to update several internal C-extensions. In these decisions the only thing that matters is

The same people removed distutils, which is why at my company we had to update several internal C-extensions. In these decisions the only thing that matters is if Microsoft, Facebook, Bloomberg or one of their employees is pleased.

itishappy 2y ago
It looks like a lot of care went in to disclosing this and providing replacements. Can I ask what you were using it for? https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/ https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/
- cozzyd 2y ago
  The deprecation of distutils caused a ton of havoc for e.g. FreeCAD
  - itishappy 2y ago
    I won't argue with that, but I would like to understand why. If I'm on the right path with these forum threads, it looks like there were issues with how Debian packages python? https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=67985 https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=67985 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/6753 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/6753 https://ffy00.github.io/blog/02-python-debian-and-the-install-locations/ https://ffy00.github.io/blog/02-python-debian-and-the-instal...
    - cozzyd 2y ago
      I don't know the details, all I know is because of that I can't currently install FreeCAD from Fedora repositories which is super annoying, and IMO not the fault of either Fedora or FreeCAD...
- tqnwx 2y ago
  Not the one you are asking, but NumPy literally converted to meson because of the deprecation. There was tons of pain for so many extensions. This pain generates job security for the bigcorp employees and grief for anyone else.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    Super helpful, thanks! The NumPy page on the migration has some details on the differences: > ... [Here] are the numpy.distutils features that are not present in setuptools: * Nested setup.py files * Fortran build support * BLAS/LAPACK library support (OpenBLAS, MKL, ATLAS, Netlib LAPACK/BLAS, BLIS, 64-bit ILP interface, etc.) * Support for a few other scientific libraries, like FFTW and UMFPACK * Better MinGW support * Per-compiler build flag customization (e.g. -O3 and SSE2 flags are default) * a simple user build config system, see site.cfg.example * SIMD intrinsics support * Support for the NumPy-specific .src templating format for .c/.h files https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/distutils_status_migration.html https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/distutils_status_migr...
    - zahlman 2y ago
      I never did understand this. It appears that they were maintaining their own fork of distutils anyway (and if you open up a latest-version wheel today you should still see it included); so why did the standard library removal cause a problem?
      - handman 2y ago
        Because the "fork" still relied on the presence of the included distutils.
        zahlman 2y ago
        But it's open source. Couldn't they just vendor it? Not like that would noticeably bloat a wheel that's already close to 20 MB on some platforms.
zahlman 2y ago
>The same people removed distutils Yes; it's extremely cruft-filled and nobody wanted to / had the skills to keep the standard library version maintained. There's a note in the Setuptools documentation somewhere about how distutils was deemed fundamentally unfixable, and it doesn't come across like the hacks Setuptools was applying on top of distutils were particularly well understood by anyone. >In these decisions the only thing that matters is if Microsoft, Facebook, Bloomberg or one of their employees is pleased. I don't think there's good evidence for this, and the current case is certainly not convincing. Why would they want distutils removed - as opposed to that motivation come from the devs who would otherwise be responsible for its bugs?

itishappy 2y ago

It looks like a lot of care went in to disclosing this and providing replacements. Can I ask what you were using it for? https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/ https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/

cozzyd 2y ago
The deprecation of distutils caused a ton of havoc for e.g. FreeCAD
- itishappy 2y ago
  I won't argue with that, but I would like to understand why. If I'm on the right path with these forum threads, it looks like there were issues with how Debian packages python? https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=67985 https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=67985 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/6753 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/6753 https://ffy00.github.io/blog/02-python-debian-and-the-install-locations/ https://ffy00.github.io/blog/02-python-debian-and-the-instal...
  - cozzyd 2y ago
    I don't know the details, all I know is because of that I can't currently install FreeCAD from Fedora repositories which is super annoying, and IMO not the fault of either Fedora or FreeCAD...
tqnwx 2y ago
Not the one you are asking, but NumPy literally converted to meson because of the deprecation. There was tons of pain for so many extensions. This pain generates job security for the bigcorp employees and grief for anyone else.
- itishappy 2y ago
  Super helpful, thanks! The NumPy page on the migration has some details on the differences: > ... [Here] are the numpy.distutils features that are not present in setuptools: * Nested setup.py files * Fortran build support * BLAS/LAPACK library support (OpenBLAS, MKL, ATLAS, Netlib LAPACK/BLAS, BLIS, 64-bit ILP interface, etc.) * Support for a few other scientific libraries, like FFTW and UMFPACK * Better MinGW support * Per-compiler build flag customization (e.g. -O3 and SSE2 flags are default) * a simple user build config system, see site.cfg.example * SIMD intrinsics support * Support for the NumPy-specific .src templating format for .c/.h files https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/distutils_status_migration.html https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/distutils_status_migr...
  - zahlman 2y ago
    I never did understand this. It appears that they were maintaining their own fork of distutils anyway (and if you open up a latest-version wheel today you should still see it included); so why did the standard library removal cause a problem?
    - handman 2y ago
      Because the "fork" still relied on the presence of the included distutils.
      - zahlman 2y ago
        But it's open source. Couldn't they just vendor it? Not like that would noticeably bloat a wheel that's already close to 20 MB on some platforms.

zahlman 2y ago

>The same people removed distutils Yes; it's extremely cruft-filled and nobody wanted to / had the skills to keep the standard library version maintained. There's a note in the Setuptools documentation somewhere about how distutils was deemed fundamentally unfixable, and it doesn't come across like the hacks Setuptools was applying on top of distutils were particularly well understood by anyone. >In these decisions the only thing that matters is if Microsoft, Facebook, Bloomberg or one of their employees is pleased. I don't think there's good evidence for this, and the current case is certainly not convincing. Why would they want distutils removed - as opposed to that motivation come from the devs who would otherwise be responsible for its bugs?