Two versions of instructions for installing Python modules

[smontanaro]

BPO	24124
Nosy	@smontanaro, @ncoghlan, @zooba, @iritkatriel

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2021-11-30.18:20:31.411>
created_at = <Date 2015-05-04.13:01:36.065>
labels = ['invalid', 'docs']
title = 'Two versions of instructions for installing Python modules'
updated_at = <Date 2021-11-30.18:20:31.408>
user = 'https://github.com/smontanaro'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2021-11-30.18:20:31.408>
actor = 'iritkatriel'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2021-11-30.18:20:31.411>
closer = 'iritkatriel'
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2015-05-04.13:01:36.065>
creator = 'skip.montanaro'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 24124
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['242555', '242650', '407392']
nosy_count = 5.0
nosy_names = ['skip.montanaro', 'ncoghlan', 'docs@python', 'steve.dower', 'iritkatriel']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue24124'
versions = ['Python 3.5']

[smontanaro]

I was hunting around the current website for notes on installing Python. Couldn't find any (BTW), so I looked in the Python source. Imagine my surprise to find two apparently overlapping files describing how to build Python modules:

./Doc/install/index.rst
./Doc/installing/index.rst

The former is marked "Legacy version." The latter seems to cover mostly installation of third-party modules using tools like pip. The former covers distutils. Oddly enough, the "legacy" version seems to have been updated more recently than the presumably current version. Do we really need to keep both versions around at this point? Should they be merged into a single document? If they are to both be retained, should the legacy version be marked as such more clearly and refer readers to the pip/pyvenv/virtualenv version?

[ncoghlan]

As far as I'm aware, it's only confusing if you're poking around in the source tree, rather than using the built docs at docs.python.org (where the link to the legacy docs is now hidden away inside the distutils module docs).

The legacy docs remain in place to preserve existing deep links and because they're the only current documentation of various distutils details that are needed to *implement* tools like pip and setuptools.

In a more ideal world, we'd have a distutils expert with the time to go through the legacy docs, cull the outdated stuff, and lift the rest up into the distutils module documentation, but all the folks that might plausibly have the expertise to do that also have far more interesting things to do with their time :(

[iritkatriel]

The legacy doc has this message in it now, so I think we can close this issue and trust Steve to deal with it along with the rest of distutils.

The entire ``distutils`` package has been deprecated and will be
removed in Python 3.12. This documentation is retained as a
reference only, and will be removed with the package. See the
:ref:`What's New <distutils-deprecated>` entry for more information.