[Catalog-sig] pre-PEP: transition to release-file hosting at pypi site

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 11 Mar, 2013, at 9:18, Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 9:06 AM, Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com> wrote:
>> But this isn't necessarily true, there is another solution: mirror your requirements locally.
> 
> I do that. This is not a solution, because your requirements yesterday
> is not your requirements tomorrow.

So? When your requirements change you change the local mirror.

> 
>> Is it even clear why numerous archives aren't hosted on PyPI?
> 
> No, the only one that has mentioned why is Marc-André, I think, whose
> eGenix packages are distributed as binary packages for loads of
> different platforms. It's unclear to me if all these binary packages
> should be uploaded to PyPI, and it is also unclear to me why they
> can't be, it seems to be mostly a case of it being too much work.
> 
> He also mentioned the big Python distributions eGenix does as being
> too large for PyPI, but I don't really see the point of uploading
> Python distributions to PyPI, they can't be installed with Python
> installers anyway.

Some reasons I've seen mentioned in the past:

* In some big companies it might be easier to publish archives on the company webserver than on PyPI due to truckloads of red tape on their part (not something we can fix)

* It is easier to publish all related archives in the same place for projects where the python package is just one component (for example client libraries for a network server)

* Authors might not know it is possible to upload archives to PyPI

> 
>> IMHO it would be better to remove barriers than force projects to host files on PyPI.
> 
> Nobody has really been able to point out any real barriers, so we
> don't know what they are or if they exist.

It may be as simple as lack of knowledge (e.g. "I didn't know I could host files on PyPI"),
or unnecessary friction in the release proces. 

I guess the only way we will know why some authors don't upload archives to
PyPI is to ask (some of) them.   

Ronald