Questions about Setuptools and alternatives

Question

I\'ve seen a good bit of setuptools bashing on the internets lately. Most recently, I read James Bennett\'s On packaging post on why no one should be using setuptools. From

Answer 1

I'm writing this in April 2014. Be conscious of the date on anything written about Python packaging, distribution or installation. It looks like there's been some lessening of factiousness, improvement in implementations, PEP-standardizing and unifying of fronts in the last, say, three years.

For instance, the Python Packaging Authority is "a working group that maintains many of the relevant projects in Python packaging."

The python.org Python Packaging User Guide has Tool Recommendations and The Future of Python Packaging sections.

distribute was a branch of setuptools that was remerged in June 2013. The guide says, "Use setuptools to define projects and create Source Distributions."

As of PEP 453 and Python 3.4, the guide recommends, "Use pip to install Python packages from PyPI," and pip is included with Python 3.4 and installed in virtualenvs by pyvenv, which is also included. You might find the PEP 453 "rationale" section interesting.

There are also new and newish tools mentioned in the guide, including wheel and buildout.

I'm glad I read both of the following technical/semi-political histories.

By Martijn Faassen in 2009: A History of Python Packaging.

And by Armin Ronacher in June 2013 (the title is not serious): Python Packaging: Hate, hate, hate everywhere.