[Distutils] Need for respect

[Ian Cordasco]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Vladimir Diaz
<vladimir.v.diaz at gmail.com> wrote:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_Package_Index
>
> Description: While the PyPI website is maintained by the Python Software
> Foundation, its contents are uploaded by individual package maintainers.
> Python package managers such as pip default to downloading packages from
> PyPI.
>
>
>
> https://pypi.python.org/pypi
>
> Description: The Python Package Index is a repository of software for the
> Python programming language. There are currently 43698 packages here.
>
>
>
> https://pythonhosted.org/an_example_pypi_project/setuptools.html#registering-your-project
>
> The normal work flow seems to be:
> 1. Register your project.
> 2. Upload your project.
>
>
> I think a newcomer is likely to conclude that "pip" downloads packages from
> the official repository (PyPI) and these packages have been uploaded to PyPI
> by third-party developers.
>
>
> On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 6:53 AM, David Arnold <davida at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 15/05/2014, at 8:32 AM, 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.
>>
>> I guess just to prove Mark's not the only one (and perhaps because I'm
>> feeling contrary), I should probably say that I don't expect that pip will
>> necessarily download things from pypi either.  I'm used to packaging tools
>> using CDNs, mirrors, and lists of sources to give me what I ask for in the
>> way they think best at the time.  That's part of their value, really.
>>

We're all anecdotes and none of us are alone or unique in our
opinions. That said, given my experience with Clojure (Clojars), Ruby
(Rubygems), Node (npm), R (CRAN), and Perl (CPAN), my expectations
match what Donald has been saying. Beyond that, I think the new PEP
that has been proposed will radically improve the user experience of
using pip and PyPI.

That said, while many users may have their own mental models, it is
apparent that several resources a new user might encounter point to
PyPI as a repository from which they download those packages.

Cheers,
Ian