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

[Lennart Regebro]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 11:46, David Robins <python at davidrobins.net> wrote:
> Some reasons to have PyPI host packages have already been mentioned in
> this thread: it makes mirroring easier

Uhm, mirroring PyPI, no. Because those packages aren't there. Setting
up your own package server, yes. It's not exactly the same thing.
Plone has set up their own mirroring of all the packages needed to set
up Plone, to avoid having problems with downed servers etc. That's not
a PyPI mirror, it's something else.

PyPI is not a vague set of every package that exists in CPAN seems to
be in some peoples view of the world. It's an index of packages. You
can also host them there. Some people choose not to. That's up to
them, and should continue to be up to them.

Making it easier to actually find the package would probably be a good
thing, such as including the URL's for all the files in the metadata
for a package, or similar. Forcing everybody to upload to PyPI is not
the correct road to travel.

> and it makes it easier for
> individuals to build new services (web sites primarily) that present new
> interfaces to the Python package collection.

Why? They can simply ignore packages that aren't uploaded. That would
increase the incentive to upload. No need to force peoples hand.

Freedom baby, yeah!
-- 
Lennart Regebro: http://regebro.wordpress.com/
Python 3 Porting: http://python-incompatibility.googlecode.com/
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