[Catalog-sig] (counter-)Proposal: Discouraging removal of packagers and revisions (Was Re: disallowing the removal of packages?)

[Jim Fulton]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 8:12 AM, Benji York <benji at benjiyork.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 8:04 AM, Martijn Faassen <faassen at startifact.com> wrote:
>> On 07/05/2011 11:55 PM, Richard Jones wrote:
>>>
>>> Could we rewind right back to the start of this conversation when it
>>> was suggested that you keep and ship a local mirror of packages you
>>> rely on? Such mirroring is trivial to set up.
>>
>> Why force everybody who depends on PyPI making a local mirror? It may be
>> trivial, but trivial * 1000 is still a lot of work.
>>
>> So I'd like to share the burden of setting it up and maintaining it with
>> others.
>
> Indeed.  There are enough people that desire a "write only" PyPI that
> it would be less work globally for those of us that want one to share
> the burden of building it.
>
> On the other hand, even though I'm in the
> don't-delete-things-from-PyPI camp myself, I'm not sure enough of its
> users and maintainers share the sentiment that we'll be able to agree
> to change PyPI to fulfill the roll.  We may have to build it outside
> of PyPI proper.

You may be right, however:

1. I think if package maintainers actually knew that removing old
revisions did harm, most would not delete revisions or packages unless
they thought it was necessary.  I think most people who remove old
revisions do so for cleanliness, not appreciating that there is a
downside.

2. I think a lot of people were turned off by the mandatory nature of
the original proposal. (I now regret my +1 of that proposal, made in
support of the sentiment behind it, but not taking into consideration
how it runs counter to Python culture.)

PROPOSAL
=========

I propose we *try* simply adding an informative confirmation when
removing a package or revision that simply explains that removal may
inconvenience people relying on the package or the specific version.
I predict that there will be a lot fewer annoying removals of we do
this.

I'd also like to remind everyone that on rare occasions, there are
good reasons to remove a package or revision and the sort of mirror
contemplated here would make that a lot harder.

Jim
-- 
Jim Fulton
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfulton