[Catalog-sig] What is the point of pythonpackages.com?

[PJ Eby]

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Martijn Faassen <faassen at startifact.com>wrote:

> On 02/07/2012 07:18 AM, Kai Diefenbach wrote:
>
>> If a listed package is not available (because an external server is
>> down) the index is broken.
>>
>
> That's an interesting observation. I would think 'broken' is strong
> language, but it the index can at least be considered incorrect in that
> particular instance.
>
> If people have tools that rely on the index being correct, then this it
> being incorrect can be a problem. You can either say those tools shouldn't
> be used for "real" development work ("you're doing it wrong"), or encourage
> people to provide the package on PyPI as well (encouragement as a social
> solution), or consider facilities to provide redundancy (caching,
> mirroring) to help with the experience (a technical solution).
>

Note, too, that prior to setuptools' development, there wasn't even any
expectation that projects listed on PyPI even have a current *release*, or
even have any *source code written* , let alone packages available for
download from PyPI itself.  (PyPI uploading was developed around the same
time as the first versions of setuptools and EasyInstall.)

Just because the common use-case for PyPI nowadays is to pull down
installation files, doesn't mean the previous use cases which PyPI catered
to are gone or not worth supporting any more.
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