On 30 January 2014 05:33, Evgeny Sazhin <eugene@sazhin.us> wrote:
Eh, I think both 1 and 3 are things that are possibly reasonable to happen and they are both things that I've contemplated as things to bring forward in using xz as an alternative compression format. Even if #1 would need a major revision of Wheel to happen adding official "support" for zip import means that the change would have to be weighed against also breaking that backwards compatibility.
Eh, please don't break it!! Improve! Keep the ability to add wheels to python path. I don't care how, zip import, non-zip import, whatever - allow for jar-like behavior - people will thank you if it will work properly !;) I know, i'm probably alone in the desert...l;)
This is the biggest concern I see with "promoting" wheels being directly importable via zipimport (I say "promoting" and not "specifying" deliberately, but I don't want to get back into the process debate). People like Evgeny (no offense intended here, but your post is a good example to use) coming from a Java background will see importable wheels and *think* that they are similar in purpose to jars. This is not, and never will be, true. Python is not Java, deployment by putting jar-like files on sys.path is not an advisable workflow for Python - no matter what parallels with Java might make it look attractive. Pointing out the implication that wheels can be put on sys.path in specialised circumstances is entirely reasonable when talking to a Python audience, but it triggers entirely the wrong associations when a person with a Java background sees the statement. Evgeny - for your purposes, you'd be better advised to see wheels as similar in principle to Windows MSI installers (they aren't, but it will avoid triggering incorrect analogies). I don't have good references or pointers to good Python development or deployment practices, but you may want to ask around on python-list. (Be careful, you may hear suggestions that you use eggs because they are similar to jars - while that is true, the way Python works means that the experience with eggs is far from being as natural as the jar experience you're used to). Paul