On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 11:44 AM, P.J. Eby wrote:

...

Yes, very much. I like 'parcel' better than 'project', partly because it's not already overload with other contextual meanings.

This is just another example of the degree of confusion around terminology here, because "parcel" isn't a substitute for "project": a "project" is something that you would release "parcels" *for*.

These two terms have yet to be formally adopted, so they can mean what we want them to mean. As you mentioned earlier the word 'project' has been adopted by setuptool documentation, but this discussion shows the distutils community is still in a process of deciding the best terminology. The word 'project' has two other meanings which are already in common use within the general developer community, one being an IDE document (such as a WingIDE project file), the other being a process/community as Tres described earlier. Also, M. Lemburg noted that a 'project' often is meant to refer to a grouping of software components (such as Zope), but not the individual software component. 'Project' is still a good candidate word and has gotten a lot of positive votes on this thread, but that was before Glyph suggested 'parcel', which I prefer for the following reasons: * It does not compete with any existing meanings in the community, and seems relatively untouched by the software community at large * The non-software meaning comes close to the non-software meaning of 'package', which most have agreed is a natural fit for setup.py thingies but has generated confusion because of other meanings. * Search engine queries for "Python parcel" are likely not to be buried in something unrelate. Even now, a Google search for "Python parsel" shows this discussion on the first page (though not at the top). * It is adequately non-silly to satisfy whoever (regretfully) renamed the Cheeseshop to PyPI, yet .nonconformist enough for the "And now for something completely different" faction. * Saying 'Python parcel' is fun, refreshing, and soon to be non-ambiguous if we choose to adopt that term. Does anyone who vote +1 for 'project' want to change that vote to 'parcel'? I do.