[Distutils] PyPI Download Counts

[anatoly techtonik]

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 3:08 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> As you have have noticed the download counts on PyPI are no longer
> updating. Originally this was due to an issue with the script that
> processes these download counts. However I have now removed the download
> counts from the PyPI webui and their use via the API is considered
> deprecated.
>

This was the only motivation to continue supporting my packages. :(
Of course it was an illusion that these were useful to someone, but it was
so sweet.


> There are numerous reasons for their removal/deprecation some of which are:
>     - Technically hard to make work with the new CDN
>         - The CDN is being donated to the PSF, and the donated tier does
> not offer any form of log access
>         - The work around for not having log access would greatly reduce
> the utility of the CDN
>

I don't believe that CDN clients don't want access to download stats - it
is an essential feature for measuring performance and rates of any download
service. Who is this provider who doesn't support them?


>     - Highly inaccurate
>         - A number of things prevent the download counts from being
> inaccurate, some of which include:
>             - pip download cache
>             - Internal or unofficial mirrors
>             - Packages not hosted on PyPI (for comparisons sake)
>             - Mirrors or unofficial grab scripts causing inflated counts
> (Last I looked 25% of the downloads were from a known mirroring script).
>

For less popular packages these factors are not that important. Also the
exact count of human downloads is rarely interesting. Also everybody
realizes there is no guarantee that download rate is not inflated. And
still these counts provide good enough overview of relative package
popularity.

I wouldn't say that counts are highly inaccurate. For relative comparisons
they are sane enough.

Having inaccurate stats is much better than not having stats at all.
Exposing download counts with a note about their accuracy will increase
chances that people will be interested to work on improving the stats.


>     - Not particularly useful
>         - Just because a project has been downloaded a lot doesn't mean
> it's good
>         - Similarly just because a project hasn't been downloaded a lot
> doesn't mean it's bad
>

How about download count for a package released 7 years ago? The download
count proves it is useful.


> In short because it's value is low for various reasons, and the tradeoffs
> required to make it work are high It has been not an effective use of
> resources.
>

What are the tradeoffs? I'd like to preserve counts - that's why I got here.
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