On Sun, 2 Jul 2023 at 15:11, Christopher Barker <pythonchb@gmail.com> wrote:
The OP of this thread is not alone -- folks want an authoritative source -- they may not get that
An authoritative source is absolutely perfect for someone who wants less choices. "Just give me the one and only option and promise me that it's perfect!" But that isn't the reality we live in, which means that for any non-trivial situation, there won't BE a valid authoritative list of "good packages". As one example, let's try looking for a regular expression parser. The standard library has one already, but PyPI has more. There's "regex", but also 500 pages of other hits for the search "regular expression" (albeit a lot of related tools that aren't actual regex parsers). There's "regular expressions for humans", "regular expressions for objects" (are those two opposites or unrelated?), "structural regular expressions", "objective regular expressions", and that's just from flipping through a couple of pages of summary. Which ones are "good packages"? Only regex? Only re (the one in the stdlib)? What if you want PCREs - there's no package called "pcre" but there's "pcre2", "python-pcre", and probably others. Importantly, the correct answer to this *depends on your use-case*. Which regular expression package do you want? *It depends*. So which one or ones should be in this curated list? Just the one most popular? You can easily find that from a simple web search. All of them? Now we're back to the original problem, but with more barriers to entry for any new package, which will have to appeal to be added to the curated list, lest it dwindle, perish, starve, pine, and die. Just some of them? Which ones? And that's for something relatively simple. How about a web framework? Which ones belong in the curated list? I don't think the PSF or PyPA should be in a position of making this list, because it would carry too much weight, too much importance. But if not them, then who? Hence, decentralization. An authoritative source is the easy solution for the reader, but a terrible one for the publisher, and ultimately, isn't a good solution for the reader either. It's not just a matter of how much work it would be. ChrisA