[Distutils] [Python Language Summit] Distutils / Packaging survey

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 12:32 AM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 12:09 AM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>> > I imagine Floris meant what most hackers mean by "package", which
>> > is what Python perversely calls a "distribution". That may or may
>> > not be what setuptools calls a "project", I've never been clear on
>> > that
>>
>> let's all use this then maybe ?
>>
>> http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonPackagingTerminology
>
> Who is "us"?

All the people in this thread and all the people that are concerned
by packaging matters. Also the problem is, even inside the community,
people don't use
the same terms or don't understand them

ask a python developer what is an "egg" for example.

> You and I know about those terms and their non-standard
> meanings in Python, but how is anyone supposed to know who comes to
> Python expecting things to mean what they mean in the majority of
> other software projects?
>
> Given the inertia on both sides of this terminological schism, and the
> fact that these concepts are not exactly things that an outsider would
> even expect to have to learn new terms for, I don't think it matters
> how prominent such a "Python packaging terminology" web page is. No
> newcomer is going to be looking for it, and IMO rightly so.

For the newcomers:

Well, between reading some thread where there is +100 mails
and reading 4 lines of a definition for each word  in a FAQ or Taxonomy...

For the non-newcomers:

Plus, last time we had a lot of discussions on packaging matters here, nothing
came out really. And I can already read things in this thread that were
said many times by the same persons in the past.

>
> The damage is done and, short of educating everyone the first time
> they learn about software, we in the Python community have the burden
> of teaching these non-standard meanings indefinitely every time the
> conflicting meanings raise themselves.

Maybe so,

Cheers,
Tarek