[Python-Dev] setuptools: past, present, future

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Leaving aside the Perl vs. Py thing, opinions on CPAN seem to be
> diverse -- yes, I've heard people say that this is something that
> Python sorely lacks; but I've also heard from more than one person
> that CPAN sucks from a quality perspective. So I think we shouldn't
> focus on emulating CPAN; rather, we should solve the problems we
> actually have. I note that CPAN originated in an age before the web
> was mature.

My personal problems with CPAN were always of the kind that it
recorded too many/too stringent dependencies.

I used it over a period of several years on Solaris, roughly
two times a year.

Each time, the package I wanted to installed depended on another
package, this in turn on a third, and some of these eventually
on a Perl version more recent than the one I had installed.

So CPAN would always *first* install a new version of Perl for
me. Sometimes, this would fail, because Perl wouldn't pass its
test suite on Solaris. So I did huge downloads, long compilation
times, and still didn't get the package installed.

I always fixed it by installing the new Perl version manually,
and then starting over with CPAN again.

I'm not exactly sure why that happened, but I think there are
two causes:

- when installing a package, the automated download tool should
  not try to find the most recent version. Instead, it should
  try to find a version that causes the least amount of changes
  to my system.

- CPAN shouldn't include Perl proper (likewise, the Cheesehop
  shouldn't include Python proper). If dependencies can't
  be resolved with the current version, but could be resolved
  with a later version, the download tool should give up
  and explain it all.

Regards,
Martin