This is very good news indeed -- life will be easier for lots of Python-based projects, with the distribute changes merged into setuptools!

This isn't good news because it means we are going to be suffering along with setuptools even longer, which is substantially the cause of all the packaging pain in Python.

If it made sense to reject distutils2 as having too much cruft, it makes even less sense to accept setuptools which will be even cruftier and provide an eternal excuse not to switch to anything better

It certainly wasn't ever the problem that "distribute is not enough like setuptools" which is all this should "solve".

I was not saying "distribute is not enough like setuptools", but rather meant I'm glad the author of distribute is taking over setuptools, with the maintainer of setuptools 'retiring'.

Can someone here point to a good article (or a couple of articles, for that matter) explaining the history of Python packaging and the "new way of doing things"?

This article has some good history: http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2012/6/22/hate-hate-hate-everywhere/

Here's a start:

http://pyvideo.org/video/1601/twisted-history-of-python-pack...

Note: Speaker is one of the devs behind PyCoders Weekly

What are the pros and cons, obvious and less so, of including pip as well?

So what does this mean for those of us who have made the jump to Distribute? Do we now jump back to Setuptools in a year or something?

  | and phasing out the distribute fork as soon as
  | is practical

I'm guessing there will at least be an 'end date' where it'll be officially deprecated.