[Distutils] Q about best practices now (or near future)

[Vinay Sajip]

Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan <at> gmail.com> writes:

> It's not about haters - it's about not causing additional pain for people

I used the term loosely in response to your comment about irritated and 
angry people.

> I'm talking about people who don't get mad, they just walk away. Or they 
even stick around, grin, and bear it without complaint. They matter, even if 
they don't complain.
> We have a duty of care to our users to find the least disruptive path 
forward (that's why Python 3 was such a big deal - we chose the disruptive 
path because we couldn't see any other solution).
> In the case of packaging, that means finding a way to let educators and 
Python developers safely assume that end users, experienced or otherwise, 
will have ready access to the pip CLI.

I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have access to the pip CLI. It's not 
about pip vs. something else. I'm saying there's no real evidence that 
people having to run "python -m getpip" once per Python installation is any 
kind of deal-breaker, or that a lack of network connection is somehow a 
problem when getting pip, but not a problem when getting things off PyPI.

More importantly, it doesn't seem like the PEP process has been followed, as 
other proposed alternatives (I mean the approach of "python -m getpip", as 
well as my specific suggested getpip.py) have not received adequate review 
or obvious negative feedback, nor have the pros and cons of bootstrapping 
vs. bundling been presented coherently and then pronounced upon.

I'll stop going on about this topic now, though I will be happy have 
technical discussions if there's really any point.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip