Use setuptools or distutils

My laptop python distribution did not come with setuptools by default.  It is simple enough to install, but it is also pretty simple to fall back on distutils if this occurs.  What do you think of this?
It unpacks the dictionary so that the items in it look just like the
keyword arguments that setup expects.  I took this idiom from the numpy
setup.py


On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 8:11 AM, Timo Heister <notifications@github.com>
wrote:

> In setup.py:
>
> > +                 long_description='BurnMan calculates elastic properties of lower mantle assemblages constrained by mineral physics.',
> > +                 packages = ['burnman', 'burnman.minerals'],
> > +                 package_data = { 'burnman' : ['data/input_*/*'] },
> > +               )
> > +
> > +#Try to use setuptools in order to check dependencies.
> > +#if the system does not have setuptools, fall back on
> > +#distutils.
> > +try:
> > +  from setuptools import setup, find_packages
> > +  metadata['install_requires'] = ['numpy', 'matplotlib', 'scipy']
> > +except ImportError:
> > +  from distutils.core import setup
> > +
> > +
> > +setup ( **metadata )
>
> what does the "**" do?
>
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> <https://github.com/burnman-project/burnman/pull/18/files#r13599070>.
>