[Distutils] If you want wheel to be successful, provide a build server.

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 1:57 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26 May 2016 at 01:11, Thomas Güttler <guettliml at thomas-guettler.de> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Am 25.05.2016 um 15:52 schrieb Nick Coghlan:
>>>
>>> On 25 May 2016 at 17:13, Thomas Güttler <guettliml at thomas-guettler.de>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you want wheel to be successful, **provide a build server**.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thomas, aside from that statement being demonstrably untrue (since the
>>> wheel format has already proven to be wildly successful, even with
>>> developers coping with Linux ABI fragmentation), an attitude of "give
>>> me more free stuff, or your project will fail" is not an acceptable
>>> tone to adopt on this list.
>>>
>>> The contributors here are (mainly) volunteers working on
>>> infrastructure provided by a public interest charity, not your
>>> personal servants to be ordered about as you feel inclined.
>>
>> You seem to be angry. Why?
>
> Thomas, I am pointing out that your current exhibition of entitled
> behaviour across multiple venues (as represented by the specific
> sentence I quoted) is problematic. Please stop trying to crack the
> whip and generate an artificial sense of urgency - software
> publication and distribution is a complex problem, and most of the
> current challenges in the PyPI ecosystem stem from an ongoing lack of
> funding which requires organisational change moreso than technical
> change. While various folks are working on that, it's mostly not a
> distutils-sig level problem, but rather a question for the PSF and for
> commercial Python redistributors.
>
> If you're looking to provide information, or ask if a particular
> solution that seems obvious to you would be feasible in practice, then
> do that. The one thing I am asking you to STOP doing is combining your
> questions with exaggerated hyperbole that's designed to make
> volunteers feel bad.

I just wanted to make sure that we didn't lose out on starting a
discussion of this problem.

The problem is of course caused by the runaway success of the wheel
format, and I'm sure it can be solved in a sensible way, but however
expressed, it's true that wheels have become so standard that we do
need to think about automation for build and release, if we aren't
going run into trouble.   By trouble, I mean that users will often hit
the situation where they don't get wheels when they expect to, and get
turned off pypi / wheels as a result.  I have personally put a great
deal of work into building and releasing wheels, so that is something
I'd really like to avoid.

So - can I humbly ask - what is the best way to get that discussion going?

Cheers,

Matthew