This is not a bug, but an idea / suggestion. It has been probably a topic of debate in the past, but I would like to bring this topic up again.

Given the size of the cycler package, it might be a good idea to copy the sourcecode of cycler (some 500 lines) into the matplotlib repository and get rid of this dependency. When I first read about the purpose of cycler, I was somewhat surprised that it is a seperate package. It's not as small as the javascript is-even package, but still, it's fairly small.

Advantages:

• Less packages, so matplotlib becomes easier to re-package for distribution builders.
• No configuration management / incompatibilities between cycler and matplotlib.
• Easier implementation of cross package changes (i.e. changes which must be applied to matplotlib and cycler at the same time).

Disadvantages:

• code duplication of the cycler package.

Please feel free to close this issue immediately if this was already brought up many times. Thank you for creating matplotlib! It's fantastic!