[Distutils] Reviving PEP 470 - Removing External Hosting support on PyPI

M.-A. Lemburg mal at egenix.com
Mon Aug 31 10:44:32 CEST 2015


On 29.08.2015 15:57, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On 28 Aug 2015 07:31, "Robert Collins" <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 28 Aug 2015 9:00 am, "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> All Linux distros I know and use have repositories distributed all
>>> over the planet, and many also provide official and less official
>>> ones, for the users to choose from, so there is more than enough
> evidence
>>> that a federated system for software distribution works better than a
>>> centralized one.
>>
>> None of them provide cross repository discovery except Conary ttbomk. And
> its is inherited so a different ux.
>>
>> So that's a difference.
> 
> Right, the distro model is essentially the one Donald is proposing -
> centrally controlled default repos, ability to enable additional repos on
> client systems. Geographically distributed mirrors are different, as those
> are just redistributing signed content from the main repos.
> 
> Hosting in multiple regions and/or avoiding selected regions would
> definitely be a nice service to offer, and it would be good to have a
> straightforward way to deploy and run an external repo (e.g. a devpi Docker
> image), but the proposed core model is itself a tried and tested one.
> Reducing back to that, and restarting the exploration of multi-index
> support from there with a clear statement of objectives would be a good way
> to go.
> 
> If we need to manually whitelist some external repos for transition
> management purposes, then that's likely a better option than settling for a
> nominally general purpose feature we'd prefer people didn't actually use.

There are quite a few systems out there that let you search for
repos with the packages you need, but they are usually web based and
not integrated into the package managers, e.g. rpmfind, various PPA
search tools (e.g. Launchpad or open build service), etc.

There's also another difference: Linux repos are usually managed
by a single entity owning the packages, very much unlike PyPI which
is merely a hosting platform and index to point to packages owned
by the authors.

So it's natural for PyPI to let package manager users know about
where to find packages which are not hosted on PyPI and the user
experience (which people always bring up as the number one argument
for all sorts of things on this list ;-)), is much better when
providing this information to the user directly, rather than saying
"I couldn't find any distribution files for you - go look on PyPI
for instructions where to find them...".

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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