2010/3/29 Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan@gmail.com>:
anatoly techtonik wrote:
So, there won't be any package management tool shipped with Python 2.7 and users will have to download and install `setuptools` manually as before:
Until the discussed package management tools support a robust inventory and uninstallation system that plays well with directly installed Python packages, you won't find widespread support on python-dev for endorsing any of them.
This wasn't the question, but the summary. I would greatly appreciate if you could provide your feedback on the second part of my letter that started with "Therefore..."
Yes, the people who use them love them for good and valid reasons, but those who absolutely detest them also do so for good and valid reasons. While this is still the case, it would be highly inappropriate for python-dev to include bootstrap scripts that direct users to these
Scripts do not _direct_ users - they _help_ users, already directed by some installation instruction or tutorial, to find and install package management system they are _trying_ to use.
The distutils2 work and the various metadata PEPs that have been approved recently are all about addressing those limitations in the infrastructure. With those in place and flowing through the Python package management ecosystem, bootstrapping interoperable package management tools is likely to become a reasonable option in the future.
Bootstrap tools evolve together with packaging situation. You may deprecate package management tool in your future bootstrap scripts if it is "incompatible" with this Python release. It is just user message that is a flexible as the mind of its author.
But we aren't there yet, and won't be for 2.7 or 3.2. From an outsider's perspective, the 3.3 time frame appears to be very possible though.
Just a thought about user story my customers would likely write if I shipped Python as a product: "As a user, I think Python is suxx, because it makes its users suffer for a long time from packaging disorder". -- anatoly t.