[Python-Dev] "setuptools has divided the Python community"

[Olemis Lang]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com> wrote:
> M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>> On 2009-03-27 17:07, P.J. Eby wrote:
>>> At 11:37 PM 3/26/2009 -0500, Eric Smith wrote:
>>>>
>>>> P.J. Eby wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> As someone else suggested, moving some of the functionality to PEP 302
>>>>> interfaces would also help.  Most of the code, though, deals with
>>>>> locating/inspecting installed distributions, resolving version
>>>>> requirements, and managing sys.path.  And most of the nastiest
>>>>> complexity comes from trying to support true filename access to
>>>>> resources -- if that were dropped from the stdlib, there'd be no need
>>>>> for egg caches and the like, along with all the complexity entailed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Application environments such as Chandler, Trac, Zope, etc. that want
>>>>> their plugins to live in .egg files wouldn't necessarily be able to use
>>>>> such an API, but the independent pkg_resources wouldn't be
>>>>> disappearing.  (Of course, they could also implement
>>>>> application-specific file extraction, if the stdlib API included the
>>>>> ability to inspect and open zipped resources.)
>>>>
>>>> Could you comment on why they couldn't use such an API?
>>>
>>> If a plugin includes C code (.so/.dll), or uses a library that operates
>>> on filenames rather than bytes in memory (e.g. gettext), then the
>>> resources would need to be extracted from the .egg.  pkg_resources
>>> transparently extracts such resources to a cache directory when you ask
>>> for a resource's filename, rather than asking for a stream or string of
>>> its contents.
>>>
>>> This feature represents a significant chunk of the complexity and code
>>> size of pkg_resources --
>>
>> The solution to this is simple: don't use ZIP files for installed
>> packages, instead unzip them into normal directories on sys.path.
>>
>> Zip files are great for shipping packages to the end-user, but
>> there's no need to keep them zipped once they get there.
>>
>
> I also think the feature should go. If you want functionality that's so
> difficult to provide when you install as a zip file, the answer is not to
> make things more complex, but to not install as zip files.
>

What about environments like Google App Engine ? I mean, AFAIK using
ZIP files is the *official* solution to meet some quotas &
requirements ... CMIIW anyway ...

I mean, for example: what if someone writes an app containing
resources like message catalogs for i18n, uploads it to GAE using ZIP
files and still wants to use the MO files (i.e. resources) for
translation (i.e. for anything else ...) ... Hmmmm ?

-- 
Regards,

Olemis.

Blog ES: http://simelo-es.blogspot.com/
Blog EN: http://simelo-en.blogspot.com/

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