[Biopython-dev] Introducing setup tools for building wheels

[Peter Cock]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Schmitt  Uwe (ID SIS)
> <uwe.schmitt at id.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Am 12.12.14 12:29 schrieb "Peter Cock" unter <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com>:
>>
>>>On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Schmitt  Uwe (ID SIS)
>>><uwe.schmitt at id.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>> Dear all,
>>
>>>>
>>>>...
>>
>>>> I modified BioPythons setup.py locally so that it uses
>>>> setuptools  instead of distutils. This enables the creation
>>>> of Python wheels which I prefer especially on Windows:
>>>> wheels can be installed in virtualenvs which is not
>>>> possible with the existing Windows installer.
>>>>
>>>> Is there some discussion about this ? I might contribute
>>>> a pull request for my modifications.
>>>
>>>Oh not the Python packaging rabbit hole :(
>>>
>>>If you can modify setup.py to use setuptools WITHOUT
>>>requiring it, so we don't need people to have setuptools
>>>in order to install Biopython from source, that seems
>>>worthwhile.
>>
>> I can try to implement a fallback to distutils if
>> setuptools is not found.
>>
>> My changes are not yet in a separate branch, I just
>> tested some modifications and was able to create a Windows
>> wheel for a colleague. Before I wanted to check if
>> my changes break anything or have some other unwanted
>> consequences I wanted to ask here as I did now.
>>
>> So I will prepare a pull request,
>>
>> Regards, Uwe
>
> Uwe's pull request:
> https://github.com/biopython/biopython/pull/446
>
> Can people have a look at that please, and try it out with a
> few different setups (e.g. virtualenv).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Peter

Now that Biopython 1.65 is out, shall we apply Uwe's pull request
and see if anything breaks? Any objections?

Thanks,

Peter