On 19 Sep 2014 04:54, "Georg Brandl" <g.brandl@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> On 09/18/2014 08:26 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
>
> > Every time an issue like this comes up, I know that I'm looking to do
> > "pip install XXX". It's working out what XXX is that's the problem.
> >
> > So I go and ask Google. A quick check on the progress bar case gets me
> > to a StackOverflow article that offers me a lot of "write it yourself"
> > solutions, and pointers to a couple of libraries. Further down there
> > are a few pointers to python-progressbar, which was mentioned in the
> > StackOverflow article, which in turn leads me to the PyPI page for it.
> > The latest version (2.3-dev) is not hosted on PyPI, so I hit all the
> > fun of --allow-external.

Paul, this could make a good "What problem are we actually trying to fix?" summary on pypa.io.

We have spent a lot of time so far on the "getting people the packages they ask for" side of things, but have barely scratched the surface of "helping people find the packages that can help them". At the moment "word of mouth" is one of our main discovery tools, and that's an issue for newcomers that may not have a big network of fellow developers yet.

This is a problem I think the Django community actually addressed fairly well through https://www.djangopackages.com/

There are similar comparison sites for Pyramid & Plone, after Audrey & Danny broke out the back end of Django Packages to make it independently deployable (see http://opencomparison.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

>
> I'd recommend searching PyPI itself. This:
>
> https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=progress+bar
>
> gives about 20 top results that look highly relevant.  A Google search
> with "site:pypi.python.org progress bar" also looks like it could have
> given you what you wanted.
>
> > Ironically, "pip install tqdm" gives me what I want instantly. But it
> > never came up via Google.

It actually occurs to me: I wonder whether anyone at Google might be interested in enhancing it's usefulness as a Python packaging search tool by looking specifically at PyPI's own search index data. (And if they could do that for us, they might be willing to do it for CPAN, RubyGems, npm, CPAN, PEAR, etc)

(on the other hand, being a vector for influencing Google search results would mean being a higher priority target for spam, so we may not actually want that)

>
> It also doesn't come up in the PyPI search, because its PyPI page isn't
> exactly very full of information :)

"SEO for Python Packages" could be a good advanced topic for packaging.python.org :)

Cheers,
Nick.

>
> cheers,
> Georg
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Python-ideas mailing list
> Python-ideas@python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
> Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/