[Distutils] Pre-pre-PEP: Requirements for the Python BUILDS Specification

[Paul Moore]

2008/10/7 Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com>:
> At 10:04 AM 10/7/2008 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
>>
>> 2008/10/7 Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com>:
>> > You can see that this is also what I did in the design of easy_install
>> > and
>> > setuptools, except that in that effort I only considered developers and
>> > users, not system packagers.
>>
>> I'd argue (you may differ) that the most significant area where you
>> missed the mark on user benefits with easy_install and setuptools is
>> the lack of easy *uninstall* and easy *list* options.
>
> Well, I'd certainly agree that those features are desirable.  But I didn't
> "miss the mark", in that those features were not part of my mark.  ;-)  The
> goal was to get widespread adoption by developers, and thus the primary
> target audience was developers.  Any features that attracted users were
> there only insofar as the benefit to users would specifically drive adoption
> by developers.

OK, I was assuming that when you said "I only considered developers
and users", you were implying that you were aiming to provide for
users benefits (and hence, the user benefit of package management -
uninstall and list - was important). As you say, though, your key aim
was to drive adoption, so making *installation* easy for users is
important, but making *uninstall* easy isn't, as it's not something
related to adoption - rather the opposite :-)

Of course, as a user, my perspectives are different :-) And as a user
who is increasingly resistant to setuptools-enabled packages precisely
because they don't address user-level issues, I suspect that catering
for user level requirements (in addition to system packagers', and the
already covered developers) is more relevant this time round.

My feeling, by the way, is that "system packagers" are the more
relevant group on Linux/Unix (where most users install Python modules
via system packages, or else they are developers) whereas on Windows,
users are the more relevant group (as there isn't really a significant
system packager role in the first place). Whether this, coupled with
the notoriously difficult task of getting Windows and Linux/Unix users
to understand each other's perspectives, is an important fact, only
time will tell.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify for me.

Paul.