Gael Varoquaux <gael.varoquaux@normalesup.org> writes:
On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 01:30:14PM +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:
Maybe the system should come with two pythons installed, one for use by the system and the other for users to add things to. Or at least be set up so that it appears that way -- they might share files under the hood.
I am quite wary about these proposals, as well as the one environment per application ones.
What you propose resembles very much to what MacOSX does, and MacOSX seems just so broken for Python. I don't use it, but I see on the different scientific-Python-related mailing lists how users have difficulties with MacOSX, and I have heard many people complain about this "feature".
As a per-application environment, I think it is bad, because it limits reuse. As I see things, applications should be able to have access to all the Python modules installed, to be able to use them, if they need. I get definitely see applications having more feature if some modules are installed (eg. Sphinx, which does syntax highlighting if pygments is installed).
Thank you. This is a major part of my concern. The Python environment should be reliably the same when invoked on a given system configuration, with egregious application-specific differences to *the instance itself* kept to a minimum. That's not to say that applications can't *override* the default instance; but such customisation should be kept to a minimum in order that dependencies, special cases, etc. are minimised. -- \ "What's another word for Thesaurus?" -- Steven Wright | `\ | _o__) | Ben Finney