Will Distribute be outdated when new packaging comes with Python 3.3?

Question

Python 3.3 will come with a new packaging tool called "packaging":

The new "packaging" module, building upon the "distribute" and "distutils2" projects and deprecating "distutils"

Does this mean that Distribute will be outdated with Python 3.3?

Answer 1

The 3.3 release notes are a bit misleading: packaging is distutils2, and it does not build upon distribute but imitates some features, but with different behavior or specification, especially for the parts that have been standardized with PEP 376, 386 and 345, and with very different code and usage.

For end users, in a way distutils2/packaging don’t make distribute outdated, as distribute still provides unique features, but from another viewpoint it is obsoleted, as it does not support the current PEPs and is not officially supported (i.e. in the stdlib).

Regarding the various packaging projects, I think the distribute devs plan to support the new PEPs, and I don’t know about setuptools. pip and buildout will use distutils2 instead of distribute as underlying library in the longer term.