Support the *new* Setuptools

[qwcode]

https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools

this may turn out to involve no effort, but minimally need to confirm the tests are passing using a branch of virtualenv that uses the new setuptools.

[hickford]

Why, what does that library do better?

[qwcode]

It's a merge of the old setuptools and distribute (a fork of setuptools)
eventually, it will end up being the only supported "setuptools".
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2013-March/020127.html

[qwcode]

logged a setuptools issue that's blocking the pip tests from passing. using the new setuptools.
deals with running "egg_info" for svn checkouts.
https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/issue/20/egg_infoget_svn_revision-behavior-change

[qwcode]

the coding is done. still need to update the docs in a few places.

[hickford]

Cool, thanks for explaining.

I asked because Python packaging libraries seem to experience an unusual rate of forking, rewrites and deprecation (eg. setuptools, distribute, distutils2), while the end user experience improves more slowly. Pip is certainly better than easy_install (thanks), but Python still suffers for shipping without a package manager (cf. Ruby with Gem, Nodejs with npm, C# with Nuget).

[qwcode]

@matt-hickford python may end up shipping with pip
see PEP439 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0439/
and #863