[Distutils] Prototype setuptools-specific PyPI index.

[Barry Warsaw]

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On Jul 23, 2007, at 4:05 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:

> Barry Warsaw wrote:
>> On Jul 23, 2007, at 1:40 PM, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>>
>>> At 12:46 PM 7/23/2007 -0400, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>>>> Under that principle, can I renew my plea for a better name than
>>>> "easy_install"?
>>> Do you have a specific name in mind?
>>
>> I knew you were going to ask that. :)  My first requirement is
>> "something without an underscore".
>
> Why?  That has to be a pure "de gustibus" argument AFAICT.

It's not.  Few *nix commands use underscores, and for good reason.   
It's user unfriendly because it's on an uncommon keycap you have to  
search for *and* you have to shift to it.   And by "you" I don't mean  
you and me (i.e. programmers) who type the silly things all day, I  
mean "users".

Sometimes hyphens are used (e.g. 'apt-get') which is only slightly  
better but those are still rare.  And this recommendation says (to  
me) that utility names should be between 2 and 9 characters and be  
composed of lower case letters and digits:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/ 
xbd_chap12.html#tag_12_02

>>  My second would be "something
>> that's evocative of snakes and eggs".
>
> You prefer cute, rather than self-explanatory?

I prefer something memorable and easy to type.  BTW, it's only a  
claim that 'easy_install' is actually 'easy' -- a claim I happen to  
agree with, mostly, but it's more hopefully self-explanatory than  
objectively so.

>> I'd further recommend that Python itself come with an 'egg(1)'
>> command, which should be a shortcut for 'python setup.py'.  To be
>> honest, the latter is not as user friendly as 'egg sdist bdist_egg
>> upload -s' but if the two use cases conflict too much, then egg(1)
>> should be reserved for the end user because developers can swallow
>> the slight inconvenience more easily.
>
> Why would a *command* invoke setup.py?  I don't see the point:   
> peopple
> who want that kind of convenience can write two-liner shell scripts,
> spelled the way they like, or even put an alias in their shell  
> profile.

Of course, and developers who dislike the verbosity are well equipped  
to do any kind of aliasing they want.  I'm not going to belabor this  
point because it's not the use case I /really/ care about and I don't  
want to sidetrack the discussion about coming up with a better  
command than 'easy_install' for users.

- -Barry

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