[Pythonmac-SIG] 2.3b1 PackageManager quick fix

Jack Jansen Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com
Fri, 2 May 2003 22:45:33 +0200


On vrijdag, mei 2, 2003, at 18:12 Europe/Amsterdam, Chris Barker wrote:

> About the package manager...
>
> Jack, have you been keeping up with the Python Package Index (PyPI)
> discussion on Catalog-Sig?
>
> http://www.python.org/pypi
>
> It looks like this is going to be the "official" package catalog for
> Python (finally!). I'm not sure what level of compatability between 
> pimp
> an PyPI is possible/desirable, but it seems that it would be nice. I'd
> really lke to see MacPython get even more integrated with the main
> Python development/distribution community.

I'm on the catalog-sig mailing list, following it with half an eye.
Depending on your point of view PyPI and PackMan either (a) solve the
same problem, (b) solve different problems or (c) are orthogonal.
I plan to do a PEP on PackMan after 2.3 is out. The code should already 
work
on most other unix systems, and there's a bug report (719300) that is 
about
not using the curl command to download files but use urllib2 in stead. 
Then
it should work on all unix platforms, and maybe even windows.

As to how PyPI and PackMan are related: you could say they solve
the same problem, because it's both about adding packages to your 
installation.
But where PyPI is about finding a package in an ever growing haystack of
useful packages it stops right there: you get a URL and you're expected 
to
download and install the package yourself.

PackMan does almost exactly the opposite: it assumes there's a 
trustworthy
benevolent person somewhere who carefully selects packages, builds and 
tests
them on a specific platform, gives them his/her seal of approval and 
provides
pointers to a binary and source installer (the latter probably the same 
you
would have found with PyPI). This person is called the Scapegoat, 
because if
the package doesn't work the end user is entitled to blame him/her: 
either
the package wasn't tested, or it was tested only partially, and a 
dependency
was missing in the database (a dependency on something the scapegoat had
installed but the user who needed the package didn't).
--
- Jack Jansen        <Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com>        
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack -
- If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman -