On Fri, Jun 30, 2023 at 8:34 AM Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:
Totally different topic, but I do think that a "curated" package repo would be helpful -- there is a lot of cruft on PyPi :-(
That idea gets thrown around every once in a while, but there are a few problems with it.
Well yes, many .... I think there are a lot of packages that we could all agree are cruft -- pre-release stuff that hasn't been updated in years, etc, etc. Then there are those that have become pseudo standards: numpy, requests, more-itertools.. Then there is EVERYTHING in between -- which is most (by number anyway). So what would a "curated" package repo be? I'm not sure -- though I'd like to see even a small amount of curation -- some barrier to get over so that we don't have the confusion of the real cruft. Unfortunately, the laudable goal of a low barrier to entry for putting a package up on PyPi, and the culture of packaging documentation oriented to PyPi means that a lot of folks put stuff up there even though there are few if any other users. So I think light curation would help a lot. [*] If the PSF recommends a package Who said anything about the PSF? ;-) -- but yes, that would be another way to go -- a tightly curated collection -- lower barrier to entry than the standard library, but still pretty high. Which is a huge burden on the developer(s). Sure -- but it should be, that's kind of the point -- the idea is to have a way to identify high quality well maintained packages.
And someone has to go through all those
packages, and then discuss it with whoever else has to be responsible for this curated collection, and come to an agreement.
yup -- that's the biggest problem right there.
Instead, what I'd like to see is: Personal, individual blogs, recommending packages that the author knows about and can give genuine advice about. Provide YOUR curated collection.
Are there not a lot of these already? -- That's how the current "cream of the crop" has risen for years. But it doesn't solve the OP's issue -- IIUC, they want to have some assurance that a given package is something that can be relied on, without having to do a bunch of research. Decentralize!
Actually, I think the Decentralized nature of what we have now is part of the problem. But this does give me an idea -- a single site that can collect recommendations and reviews -- maybe even as part of PyPi itself -- that could help folks find the good ones. -Chris B [*] conda-forge is an example of light curation -- nothing goes on the conda-forge channel without approval of the conda-forge core team. But they are reviewing only the conda package itself -- is it built right?, is it compatible with the rest of conda-forge?, does it have its license included?, ... -- not the quality or usefulness of the package itself. But this barrier to entry means that no one puts anything up there unless they have a good reason to, and there are some assurances that things will work together. I think even that helps a lot.
ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/OGFJOP... Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
-- Christopher Barker, PhD (Chris) Python Language Consulting - Teaching - Scientific Software Development - Desktop GUI and Web Development - wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython