[Distutils] Need for respect

Thu May 15 11:54:27 CEST 2014

On 15.05.2014 00:32, Mark Young wrote:
> I know I'm just an anecdote, but as just a regular user of pypi, pip, and
> friends (I've never even posted something to pypi), when I say "pip install
> spam", I don't really care where it comes from and I have no expectation
> that pip has to get it from pypi.

Thank you for your input, Mark. Good to know that I'm not completely
off with my impression of user expectations :-)

FWIW: I don't know anyone who ever bothered researching where their Ubuntu,
Cent OS or SuSE packages came from; and most of the complaints I've heard
about Python installers not working throughout the years were actually due
to PyPI itself not working (in the past), rather than some external hosting
platform being down.

Donald: I understand where you are coming from, hear what you are saying
and know that you want to push for the new PyPI hosting platform.

The hosting platform is brilliant and serves a need for many Python
users, both developers and authors.

I'm just trying to make you see that conceptually separating the
hosting from the index part is a good thing.

This lets us stay more flexible, define clear APIs and remain open
for inclusion of other Python package distribution platforms in
the future, e.g. the binstar platform used by conda/Anaconda or
the PyPM index used by pypm/ActiveState.

I'll comment on the PEP in a separate email.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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> 2014-05-14 18:24 GMT-04:00 Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io>:
> 
>>
>> On May 14, 2014, at 5:33 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 14.05.2014 22:56, Donald Stufft wrote:
>>>> On my phone so I can't respond to everything here but I just want to
>> say I don't think a discussion where we can't challenge each other's
>> conclusions isn't going to go anywhere. Hopefully we are adults and can
>> handle disagreement.
>>>
>>> There's nothing wrong with disagreeing on conclusions and
>>> agreeing on this disagreement, but trying to shut someone down is
>>> not the right way forward.
>>>
>>> What I'm trying to get back into the discussion is the view on
>>> PyPI as a community resource, which does not only need to address
>>> the needs of users of installers, but also those of developers who
>>> register their packages with it and make the whole thing come to
>>> life.
>>>
>>> PyPI is used by people through the browser, it's used by people
>>> with installer tools such as pip, easy_install, zc.buildout, conda, etc.
>>> and it's used by developers using distutils, setuptools and
>>> other build tools that can talk to the PyPI API.
>>>
>>> All of these people have needs and requirements, so we need to
>>> find ways to make most of them happy. In discussions on this list,
>>> I often get the feeling that the package authors are underrepresented,
>>> and that's why I try to add some of package author views to
>>> the discussion and also views as user of other tools than pip.
>>>
>>>>> On May 14, 2014, at 4:26 PM, "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Noah, please reread the subject line and the message that started
>>>>> this thread. If we want to have a useful discussion, calling someone's
>>>>> conclusion incorrect is not helpful.
>>>
>>
>> Of course PyPI is a community resource and package authors are important. I
>> know that intimately since I publish several things through PyPI that I
>> wrote
>> and I'm involved with several other projects. I suspect most people on this
>> list have published at least one package. If anything we are top heavy in
>> the viewpoints of authors with practically no representation from people
>> who
>> just want to install some stuff.
>>
>> I *know* that users have the expectation that installing something from
>> PyPI
>> means they are downloading it from PyPI. I know this because they tell me
>> this,
>> constantly. I've dealt with users every single day who are struggling to
>> deal
>> with the concepts introduced in PEP 438. Whenever I explain to them that
>> pip
>> will scan PyPI for links to places that are not PyPI they think that is
>> just
>> crazy. It completely violates their expectations. The *only* people I have
>> ever
>> seen *not* surprised by that, are people who happen to already know how
>> pip/setuptools/etc works. Most of those people that also think it's crazy
>> that
>> they do that but they aren't surprised by it.
>>
>> Framing the hosting of files on PyPI as an "extra" feature makes it appear
>> to
>> be something added that isn't part of it's core competency. Nothing could
>> be
>> further from the truth. For most people, authors and users, the fact that
>> PyPI
>> host packages *is* what PyPI is. A mere 7% of projects that are registered
>> with PyPI have any reliance what so ever on externally hosted files. The
>> vast
>> bulk of those are projects where the author forgot to upload a file or two
>> and external hosting isn't their primary hosting method.
>>
>> That being said, nobody is trying to mandate that everyone must upload to
>> PyPI.
>> I've put forward a PEP that proposes a way to resolve the problems with
>> reliability and implicitness of the current method of not hosting PyPI with
>> centralizing around the multiple index/URL support. There are changes to
>> PyPI
>> in that proposal to increase the discover-ability of the additional indexes
>> however I ultimately think that it is the right path forward which brings
>> PyPI
>> inline with what the vast bulk of people (authors and users) expect but
>> still
>> preserves the ability for people who don't want to, to not host on PyPI as
>> well
>> as reduce the number of ways that users have to be aware of for things not
>> being hosted on PyPI. It follows a pattern that many users are used to
>> through
>> their dealings with OS packages and other languages, it allows them to
>> explicitly opt in to where they install packages from, and it allows a
>> whole
>> bunch of UX issues in the current tools to just be eliminated.
>>
>> Please go view that proposal (PEP 470, I posted it to distutils-sig earlier
>> today) and comment on it.
>>
>> -----------------
>> Donald Stufft
>> PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372
>> DCFA
>>
>>
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>>
>>
> 