[Distutils] Python people want CPAN and how the latter came about

[David Lyon]

On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:04:00 +0100, Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2009/12/22 David Cournapeau :
>> 
>> ..
>>
>> The devil is really in the details for packaging, which is why
>> explicit is a very desirable feature. Someone noticed earlier that
>> distutils was the exact contrary of the python zen on some core
>> issues: more than one way to do it, lack of simplicity, often
>> implicit. I think this describe the problem quite well, and I am
>> deeply convinced that that's the root cause of the failure of Pypi for
>> a subset of the community.
> 
> Well, you have completely failed in explaining why CPAN is fantastic
> and PyPI sucks, probably because your answer isn't about CPAN at all,
> but just the same old packaging rant. It really grows old you know.

Oh come on... nobody is saying pypi sucks. Only that the package
installation experience in python does. In python, these are two 
separate and entirely different things.

Under Perl, the whole thing is just called CPAN. There's one CPAN
client that you use (btw - that gets included in your perl
distribution) and it works.  

Guido is being harassed about by users from the scientific community
as I understand it. They are after a 'nice' user experience like 
they get in Perl. 

So let me translate as best as I can ...

"Python people want _NICE_USER_EXPERIENCE_ and how
the latter came about"

David