[Catalog-sig] [Distutils] Simpler Python package management: the "egg" command

[Barry Warsaw]

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On Aug 14, 2007, at 7:15 PM, Bjørn Stabell wrote:

> If there's
> general agreement that Python eggs is the future way of distributing
> packages, why not call the command "egg", similar to the way many
> other package managers are named after the packages, e.g., rpm, port,
> gem?

+1

> Next, where do you find eggs?  This might not be a big issue if the
> "egg" command is configured properly by default, but I'd offer my
> thoughts.  I know the cheeseshop just changed name back to PyPI
> again.  In my opinion, neither of the names are good in that they
> don't help people remember; any Monty Python connection is lost on
> the big masses, and PyPI is hard to spell, not very obvious, and a
> confusing clash with the also-prominent PyPy project.  Why not call
> the place for eggs just eggs?  I.e., http://eggs.python.org/

+1 -- nice!

> THE COMMAND LINE PACKAGE MANAGEMENT TOOL
>
> The "egg" command should enable you to at least find, show info for,
> install, and uninstall packages.  I think the most common way to do
> command line tools like this is to offer sub-commands, a la, bzr,
> port, svn, apt-get, gem, so I suggest:
>
> 	egg			- list out a help of commands
> 	egg search	- search for eggs (aliases: find/list)
> 	egg info		- show info for egg (aliases: show/details)
> 	egg install	- install named eggs
> 	egg uninstall		- uninstall eggs (aliases: remove/purge/delete)
>
> so you can do:
>
> 	egg search bittorrent
>
> to find all packages that have anything to do with bittorrent (full-
> text search of the package index), and then:
>
> 	egg install iTorrent
>
> to actually download and install the package.

Yes, yes, yes, +1.

> Optional: These days XMLRPC (and the WS-Deathstar) seems to be losing
> steam to REST, so I think we'd gain a lot of "hackability" by
> enabling a REST interface for accessing packages.

+1

> Eventually we probably need to enforce package signing.

+1

> It'd be good for "egg" to support both system- and user-wide
> configurations, and to support downloading from several package
> indexes, like apt-get does.

And it would be nice if Python could be adapted to provide for user- 
specific site-packages so that PYTHONPATH hackery isn't necessary.

Bjorn, I wish I had time to help, but I like where you're going with  
this.  I think it would greatly improve the utility of eggs.

- -Barry



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