[Python-Dev] "setuptools has divided the Python community"

[Tres Seaver]

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Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> I would suggest there may be three use cases for Python installation tools.
> Bonus -- I'm not a web developer! :)
> Case One: Developer wishing to install additional functionality into the
> system Python interpreter forever
> Case Two: Developer wishing to install additional functionality into the
> system Python interpreter for a specific task
> Case Three: Person wanting to install an application which happens to be
> written in Python
> 
> The prime limitation of setuptools appears to me to come when there are
> conflicts. Other than that, for packages where it is available, I have never
> had an issue with the functioning of setuptools. It's Just Fine. For issues
> where there are conflicts, where I have been sufficiently motivated, setting
> up a virtualenv has more than met my needs. In fact, that's and *awesome*
> piece of functionality.

Agreed.  I find the isolation provided by virtualenv to be essential to
the work I do.

> For case one, where I want to install additional functionality into my
> system Python interpreter "forever", it would be great to have my system
> manage this. On my ubuntu machine, this happens. The Ubuntu packages take
> care of things very satisfactorily and I don't see how anyone would have a
> problem with it. I don't know what the situation is under Windows, however
> systems such as the Enthought Python Suite do provide kitchen-sink-included
> Python distributions.
> 
> Perhaps an automated updates site could be configured such that there was a
> package for a variety of "Python + some extra modules" scenarios.
> 
> For installing applications, I would presume that app developers would
> generally take care of this themselves, through the use of an MSI or .deb
> file in order to protect their dependencies somewhat.
> 
> For anyone looking to extend their interpreter for some specific task,
> virtualenv and setuptools should do the job, and the developer can just go
> the extra mile to do the work to get it right themselves.
> 
> Perhaps the most under-served use case is people who want a
> kitchen-sink-included distribution, to be managed by their system packages.
> Either they are not away of systems such as EPS or are opposed to it in
> principle. Were time and effort no obstacle, I would suggest that it may be
> worth Python.org offering to host and/or maintain a variety of Python
> distributions available for installation which include various standard
> extensions. The model that eclipse takes, with a "base" system and plugins,
> but with flavoured versions available (i.e. Scientic Python Distribution to
> include SciPy, Numpy and MatPlotLib for example).
> 
> Thoughts?

I like the summary, and the idea of 'contrib' distributions.


Tres.
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Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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