[Pythonmac-SIG] PackageManager philosophy

[Kevin Ollivier]

On Friday, August 1, 2003, at 03:44  PM, Jack Jansen wrote:

> Changing the subject on this, because it is important.
>
> On zaterdag, aug 2, 2003, at 00:17 Europe/Amsterdam, Bob Ippolito 
> wrote:
>> So this is what you've been doing for every package?!  Wow.
>>
>> What I do is download a package, chdir to its folder, make sure it 
>> builds (if I don't know this already), type makepimp, edit the plist 
>> if I need to, and then makepimp sync to upload the new plist ;)
>
> Yes, I already got the impression this is what you did:-)
>
> I think we have rather different ideas on what Package Manager is, and 
> it's probably good if we work out whether it can be both.
>

How about this?

To make PM behave more in line with your goals (as I understand them, 
anyways) while still giving Bob and others (myself included) the 
functionality and flexibility they desire, I was thinking there could 
be some sort of "stamp of approval" to say that the 'scapegoat' 
(Package Inspector - PI? =) has tested package X binaries on platforms 
X, Y and Z. A warning could pop up if such an approval doesn't exist - 
"Warning: This package has not been confirmed to work on your 
particular platform or sufficiently tested. If you experience any 
installation problems, please report any problems to 
scapegoat at python.org" - sort of like digital signatures. Or, the end 
user could configure PM to simply not show any untested packages. (it 
could also be shipped this way by default)

It seems to me that you're aiming for a more traditional development 
crowd who are used to commercial software and don't want unexpected 
snafus when trying to install and use modules, and I think that if we 
build in those sorts of controls, and maybe even turn them on by 
default, we could do that while still letting those who want to live 
dangerously install tons of modules without thinking twice. I would 
really, really like to see both of these goals merged into one kick-ass 
package management tool for Python. ;-)

Thanks,

Kevin