[Python-Dev] Refactoring installation schemes

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:29 PM, David Lyon <david.lyon at preisshare.net> wrote:
[...]
>
> But if you put all these PEPs together, implementing all the new features
> can't come to more than 300 lines of code...
>
> Since we hardly got anywhere on them in 2009, it will be interesting to
> see how much of it gets done in 2010.

The work that was done during the last year was brainstorming on PEPs.
You can't count that work
in SLOCs, but in trying to find a consensus on packaging problems.

And I can fairly say that we are very close to something that can get
accepted by the community,
then turned into code in Distutils/pkgutil.

>
>> But there's no plan to include a new *distribution* format in Distutils.
>
> I wasn't suggesting that - at all.
>
> And saying that 'eggs' are a *new* python package format isn't really
> really helpful because to my understanding they've been around for
> some number of years.

They are new to Distutils. They are not new to the Python packaging
eco-system of course,
and PEP 376 rely on many ideas created in Setuptools.

> No, i won't raise why we have EGG_INFO directories and a whole lot
> of half working egg stuff in standard python... I'm just asking
> why it can't be more consistant? while we're on the refactoring
> topic.

The consistency will come through the standard we are building in PEP 376.

[..]
> But I've been on the list for some twelve months asking for work
> to help out with, and haven't been assigned a single task to do
> yet.
>
> Seriously, if you won't allocate work out to people then how can
> it get done?

I am sorry that you feel that way. We don't allocate coding work to
people in this process.
That's not the way it works.

Rather, people help in building the PEPs by providing their own
feedback/experience.

At the end, we are trying to have PEPs that adresses the wider range of cases.


>
> Whilst I personally think a lot of the stuff in those PEPs is not
> high on quality, why don't we just get them implemented anyway?
>
> I'm a fairly proficient develper, but I can't get assigned a single
> work item..

We have already prototypes for each PEP so people can try them out,
enhance them while the PEPs
are being built. If you want to help in their coding, you are more
than welcome. They are on a DVCS
at bitbucket.

>
> And to me, it doesn't seem any harder than just selecting 'djlyon'
> on the python tracker for some work items...
>
> Surely those PEPs all amount to 300+ lines of code. With two people
> working on it, that's only surely 150+ lines of code each... That
> shouldn't be such a big challenge for 2010..

Again, the big challenge is not on the coding part. If it was,
Distutils would have them already.
The challenge is on the PEPs, and on making sure we collect all PoVs
and feedbacks, before we change
Distutils in Python 2.7/3.2

Regards
Tarek