Proliferation of Python packaging formats

[Jon Ribbens]

On 2021-11-17, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is the proliferation of packaging formats in Python as nutzo as this author
> believes?
>
> https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Python-stop-screwing-distros-over.html
>
> Asking because I've never been in the business of releasing "retail" Python
> applications or packages.

Well the first paragraph is ridiculous. I've never heard of half of the
things he lists as being necessary to deal with, and half the remainder
are just words relating to packages, i.e. you could make a similar list
for any language.

The other major problem with that post is that it gives no examples
or even clues as to what the author's actual problem is...

On the other hand it is true that Python's packaging system is confusing
and very badly documented, and I doubt the vast majority of people have
any idea of what the difference between 'distutils' and 'setuptools' is
(I certainly don't), except inasmuch as 'setuptools' (and 'wheel') is
something you have to remember to manually update after creating a
virtual environment before installing your actual packages.

It's also true that you have to remember with Python that you basically
cannot use 'pip' to install anything globally as it will interfere with
the operating system's packaging. You must use virtual envs for
everything, or the operating system's provided packages.

Also PEP 518's choice of TOML is absolutely risible, a language about
which the only positive thing can be said is that it's not as bad as
YAML, and for which Python doesn't even have a built-in parser -
something that should have absolutely ruled it out as an option.