[Python-Dev] Status of packaging in 3.3

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Nick Coghlan writes:
 > On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
 > > Paul Moore writes:
 > >
 > >  > End users should not need packaging tools on their machines.
 > >
 > > I think this desideratum is close to obsolete these days, with webapps
 > > in "the cloud" downloading resources (including, but not limited to,
 > > code) on an as-needed basis.
 > 
 > There's still a lot more to the software world than what happens on
 > the public internet.

That's taking just one extreme out of context.  The other extreme I
mentioned is a whole (virtual) Python environment to go with your app.

And I don't really see a middle ground, unless you're delivering a
non-standard stdlib anyway, with all the stuff that end users don't
need stripped out of it.  They'll get the debugger and the profiler
with Python; should we excise them from the stdlib just because end
users don't need them?  How about packaging diagnostic tools,
especially in the early days of the new module?

I agreed that end users should not need to download the packaging
tools separately or in advance.  But that's rather different from
having a *requirement* that the tools not be included, or that
installers should have no dependencies on the toolset outside of a
minimal and opaque runtime module.