On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 11:28 PM, Donald Stufft <donald@stufft.io> wrote:

On Apr 18, 2014, at 6:24 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 18 April 2014 18:17, Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 18 April 2014 22:57, Donald Stufft <donald@stufft.io> wrote:
>>> Maybe Nick meant ``pip install ipython[all]`` but I don’t actually know what that
>>> includes. I’ve never used ipython except for the console.
>>
>> The hard bit is the QT Console, but that's because there aren't wheels
>> for PySide AFAICT.
>
> IPython, matplotlib, scikit-learn, NumPy, nltk, etc. The things that
> let you break programming out of the low level box of controlling the
> computer, and connect it directly to the more universal high level
> task of understanding and visualising the world.
>
> Regards,
> Nick.
>
>>
>> Paul
>
>
>
> --
> Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

FWIW It’s been David Cournapeau’s opinion (on Twitter at least) that some/all/most
(I’m not sure exactly which) of these can be handled by Wheels (they just aren’t right now!).

Indeed, and the scipy community has been working on making wheels for new releases. The details of the format does not matter as much as having one format: at Enthought, we have been using the egg format for years to deploy python, C/C++ libraries and other assets, but we would have been using wheels if it existed at that time. Adding features like pre remove/post install to wheels would be great, but that's a relatively simpler discussion.

I agree with your sentiment that the main value of sumo distributions like anaconda, active python or our own canopy is the binary packaging + making sure it all works together. There will always be some limitations in making those sumo distributions work seamlessly with 'standard' python, but those are pretty much the same issues as e.g. linux integrators have.

If the python packaging efforts help the linux distribution integration, it is very likely to help us too (us == sumo distributions builders) too.

David