On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com> wrote:
On 1 June 2013 16:57, Jim Fulton <jim@zope.com> wrote:
In the Python community, we've been pretty laid back about how we name packages. When we were small, this made sense. It doesn't make sense any more.
I'd like to see some evidence that this is the case.
How about the "A process for removal of PyPi entries" thread?
It doesn't seem so to me - most package names are relatively discoverable and/or intuitive,
Um, boto? fabric? paramiko? kazoo? The way I find packages is by searching. Names are irrelevant.
and we currently have basically no namespacing.
We have a ton of namespacing. It's just informal. IMO, it's a result of good hygiene and citizenship (I don't mean to dis anyone not using namespaces).
There's a long way to go before something like your suggestion is needed, in my view.
<shrug> If the projects now using namespaces weren't, I predict the problem would be a lot more apparent.
Unfortunately, I think the sanest way of avoiding most package name issues is to base them on domains, as is done in the Java world. This goes against the Python philosophy of preferring flat to nested, but I still think it's better than trying to police squatters, or to encouraging races to claim top-level names.
No, no, no...
There's the point Donald made that you require people to own a domain (or you create some sort of hack like org.bitbucket.username/com.github.username/...) but it also makes package names unreasonably deep, and requires an explosion of namespace packages at the top level. And it's ugly :-)
Perl manages with a relatively flat namespace and relatively informal rules for managing package names (AIUI). I'm sure Python can, too.
Perl's a dead language. :) Jim -- Jim Fulton http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfulton