On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Daniel Fetchinson < fetchinson@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hi folks, here is an idea that came out of (not quite) thin air:

Pypi, setuptools, distribute & Co are all very useful for finding, installing, upgrading, etc. of python packages. They even handle dependencies! Yaaaay!

However, there is one more thing that could be built on top of them that would make them even more useful. This is the <drum roll please> Python Package Collections! This would be an online service to organize packages into collections allowing one to download, install, build, upgrade, etc. many packages at once. Say somebody finds package1, package2, package3, package4 very useful and figure they naturally belong together by topic. And so our test person always wants to have them all installed so when he downloads a new python version which will make his python arsenal not only 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.3 but also 3.4, he won't have to install all these packages separately again but he can just install the collection with one command or one click.

You might ask why can't our test person just do "install package1" then "install package2" then "install package3" then "install package4"? Well, certainly he could do that but if he found that these four packages nicely go together chances are others will find it handy to have them all too. So our brilliant test person will want to share his collection with others telling them essentially "if you like working with X" or "you frequently develop for Y" then "you can just install my collection and you will be ready to go"!

Anybody could organize packages into collections and I bet there would be very popular ones like "mathematics" including all sorts of math packages from pypi, or "pdfgoodies" including everything pdf related that one typically needs for work with pdf. These don't have to depend on each other (dependencies are handled quite well by existing tools), they just need to have the property that they are very handy to have together.

To be honest the idea is not mine, take a look at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/ how add-ons for firefox are organized into collections. It's basically the same idea but for python packages.

This whole thing could be integrated into pypi or initially the idea could be tested on a separate site to see if it catches on.

What do you all think?

Cheers, Daniel

-- Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas

Sounds like a great idea for a separate site.

You can also publish pip requirement files at a URL, and use: pip install -r http://pypackagecollections.org/scraping-tools.txt It works with upgrade/uninstall/etc. But typically if you want to get someone started on a new task using a new set of tools, you want to also generate or at least unpack starter files for them – installing libraries isn't helpful if you don't know what they do or how to use them, or distinguish between libraries-you-use and libraries-your-libraries-use. Which is to say, I'm not surprised that a public index of requirement files hasn't emerged, because it makes more sense for specific starter guides to be written, and those guides may use other tools. On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Daniel Fetchinson < fetchinson@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hi folks, here is an idea that came out of (not quite) thin air:

Pypi, setuptools, distribute & Co are all very useful for finding, installing, upgrading, etc. of python packages. They even handle dependencies! Yaaaay!

However, there is one more thing that could be built on top of them that would make them even more useful. This is the <drum roll please> Python Package Collections! This would be an online service to organize packages into collections allowing one to download, install, build, upgrade, etc. many packages at once. Say somebody finds package1, package2, package3, package4 very useful and figure they naturally belong together by topic. And so our test person always wants to have them all installed so when he downloads a new python version which will make his python arsenal not only 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.3 but also 3.4, he won't have to install all these packages separately again but he can just install the collection with one command or one click.

You might ask why can't our test person just do "install package1" then "install package2" then "install package3" then "install package4"? Well, certainly he could do that but if he found that these four packages nicely go together chances are others will find it handy to have them all too. So our brilliant test person will want to share his collection with others telling them essentially "if you like working with X" or "you frequently develop for Y" then "you can just install my collection and you will be ready to go"!

Anybody could organize packages into collections and I bet there would be very popular ones like "mathematics" including all sorts of math packages from pypi, or "pdfgoodies" including everything pdf related that one typically needs for work with pdf. These don't have to depend on each other (dependencies are handled quite well by existing tools), they just need to have the property that they are very handy to have together.

To be honest the idea is not mine, take a look at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/ how add-ons for firefox are organized into collections. It's basically the same idea but for python packages.

This whole thing could be integrated into pypi or initially the idea could be tested on a separate site to see if it catches on.

What do you all think?

Cheers, Daniel

-- Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas