Quarterly status report

[Marcus von Appen]

Dear all,

find below a brief list of the stuff we did the last quarter. I'm planning to
compile this into the status report to be delivered next week.

* py-distribute has been replaced by the refreshed py-setuptools port,
   which comes with a lot of features to simplify the ways of installing python
   packages. The change also led us to install everything through setuptools
   now, which resembles a lot of pip and allows us to do some major cleanup
   of the distutils installation behaviour.
* The implicit lang/python build and run-time dependency was removed from the
   ports infrastructure. Every port now depends on a specific python version or
   on the lang/python meta ports. This avoids compatibility issues for ports
   that depend on python 2.x OR python 3.x exclusively, but use the `python`
   command, which might point to an incompatible user choice.
* lang/python27 was updated to version 2.7.6, lang/python 3.3 was updated to
   version 3.3.3, lang/pypy was updated to version 2.2.1
* We are currently working on the necessary ifnrastructure quirks to support
   different python versions for the same port. Most of the work has been done
   and needs a final confirmation from portmgr before testing starts.

Open Tasks:
- Develop a high-level and lightweight Python Ports Policy.
- Add support for granular dependencies (for example >=1.0 or < 2.0).
- Look at what adding pip (Python Package Index) support looks like.
- Convert easy_install to yes and remove easy_install specific in the port
- More tasks can be found on the Team's wiki page (see links).

Let me know as soon as possible, if something's missing on that list.

Cheers
Marcus