[Catalog-sig] Prototype setuptools-specific PyPI index.

[Jim Fulton]

On Jul 22, 2007, at 12:24 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

>>> If people do misspell a package name when invoking easy_install,
>>> they get the feature that you consider of no value.
>>
>> That is not correct. Not all packages are in PyPI.  Using a  
>> package that
>> isn't in PyPI will trigger a fetch of that page.
>
> I don't understand. What page is fetched if the package is not in  
> PyPI?

We have lots of packages that aren't in PyPI.  Some of them aren't  
ready for PyPI or are not of general interest. Some are proprietary.


>> It isn't misspelled,
>> it's just not there.  People should *not* misspell pages when using
>> setuptools.  They should certainly not use misspelled package  
>> names in
>> requirements.  In my strongly help opinion, allowing imprecise  
>> names in
>> requirements and setuptools command if of negative value.
>
> I cannot comment on. I don't use setuptools, and have no intuition  
> what
> is good or bad when using it (for example, I consider .egg files and
> the notion of eggs inherently bad).
>
> My main motivation to provide that page is that the setuptools
> specification says it should be there. As this entire infrastructure
> is for the sake of setuptools, I find it pointless to not support
> setuptools fully.

Fair enough. Theory beats practicality every time. ;)


>> I'd be happy to contribute my polling version.  That solves my  
>> problems
>> and I can't justify the additional effort to figure out the  
>> cheeseshop
>> softtware.
>
> I'd like to hear other opinions here.

Yes. This has been a fairly limited discussion. Sigh.

> Would people prefer if the index
> was always correct (and perhaps somewhat slow), or would they prefer
> instead that it is super-efficient (and somewhat out-of-date)?

Where somewhat out of date could be a matter of seconds.  IMO, a  
python.org index could poll every few seconds, given that local  
polling only takes a few milliseconds.  I have a feeling that this  
discussion is going to annoy someone with PyPI software knowledge  
enough to add baking on write.  :) For example, I had the impression  
that Rene' was planning to invoke scripts after updates.  It would be  
easy to invoke my polling script or a script based on your work,

BTW, I'm pretty sure that geographic mirrors are desirable, both for  
performance and redundancy reasons.  I think that, for these, polling  
once a minute is plenty and puts negligible load on PyPI, assuming  
that there aren't hundreds of them.

Jim

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