[Catalog-sig] PyPI down again...

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Right now the PyPI codebase seems to have a bus number[1] of one:
> Martin, who is apparently the only person who really understands the
> code well enough to do significant work on it. This is something which
> could be remedied by having more people learn the code and get
> familiar enough with it to make contributions, but that's complicated
> by the fact that PyPI still does so much basically from scratch -- it
> doesn't even use the standard gateway interface Python web developers
> are expected to be familiar with, much less any well-known libraries.

There are several ways to run PyPI, including WSGI, FCGI, CGI, and a
stand-alone server. The mode which is used on PyPI just happens to be FCGI.

I'm not sure how the integration with Apache matters - the actual code 
generating web pages is the same all the time, no matter what gateway 
interface is being used.

As for the bus number: Richard Jones is also familiar with the code, as 
he wrote it in the first place. He just didn't contribute much lately.
I believe Tarek is also knowledgable. So the bus factor is rather 3.

> As to *what* it should be rewritten with, I frankly don't care so long
> as it's something reasonably well-known and well-understood within the
> broader Python web community, and speaks WSGI (which is essentially
> the same thing, but it needs to be said).

I don't really want to "sell" the code base, but just for the record:
It's written "in" WSGI, Zope Page Templates, and Postgres. These are
all things that are well-understood in the Python web community.

> That gives all sorts of
> options, from a lightweight stack on something like Werkzeug all the
> way up to a full framework solution with something like Pylons. To
> avoid the perennial holy wars that choice seems to engender, though,
> I'd suggest just asking Martin to pick something he feels he'd be
> comfortable with, and having everyone else who wants to help shut up
> and go with his choice.

It would be really up to Richard Jones, and he said he would prefer
Django; so do I.

Regards,
Martin