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

[Paul Moore]

2009/3/27 David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com>:
> Concerning contribution for windows binaries: as the current numpy
> developer in charge of windows binaries and windows support for a
> while, my experience is that the windows situation for contribution is
> very different from the other platforms. The mentality is just
> different. At the risk of an overly broad and unfair generalization,
> my experience is that on windows, people just want things to work,
> complain when they do not, and almost never contribute back to make it
> work, or when they do, they are almost never familiar with how things
> work on other platforms, so they suggest broken fixes.

As a Windows user, I'll actually agree with this :-)

As a bit of self-justification, I'll point out that it's *hard* to get
things (specifically, C extensions, in this context) to work on
Windows. The lack of a C compiler available "as standard" can be a
nuisance (although nowadays, MSVC and mingw are good free options, so
it's *only* a nuisance these days, rather than a showstopper). The
lack of any reasonable standard for external libraries (zlib, jpeg,
whatever) can be a huge issue [1]. So it's often a case of "give me a
working binary, or it's too hard for me to use this module and I'll
find another solution".

Not contributing back is probably a cultural thing. When the norm is
to pay a lot of money for software, you get used to the idea that you
expect not to have to fix the bugs in it yourself :-) I try hard not
to forget that this doesn't apply when I get something for free, but I
don't always remember...

Windows users don't understand Unix, sure. But Unix users don't
understand Windows either. And one person's "broken fix" is another's
"works for me". Would you feel better if I posted a fix and explicitly
said "this works for me, but I don't know anything about your system,
so it may need tweaking to apply generally"? The effect is identical,
it's just how I express it (and FWIW I've seen exactly this type of
scenario where it's a Linux-specific fix not working for Windows (or
Macs, for that matter)). The alternative is not accepting
contributions unless they are perfect, or expecting every contributor
to be willing to spend a lot of time learning the intricacies of
systems they'll never use, to improve their contribution in ways that
make no difference to them, and which they can't even test.

Anyway, this is straying well off-topic, into Linux vs Windows
territory, so I shall say no more!

Paul

[1] As a concrete example: My current PC is newly built, with Python
2.6 and MS Visual Studio 2008 Express and mingw installed. That's all
the development tools I presently have. How much time would I have to
spend to get to a point where I could build numpy for myself, from
this point? Based on previous experience, my instinct is that the
answer is "too much effort to justify it for the limited interest I
have in numpy"...)