Package dependencies (Re: [Webware-discuss] Documentation additions/corrections)

[Terrel S. <tsh...@uc...>]

On Sat, 2002-05-25 at 09:44, Mike Orr wrote:
> On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 05:07:13AM -0700, Steve Freitas wrote:
> > > I am pretty sure that the mxDateTime isn't "stock" in any of the python
> > > versions.  
> 
> It's definitely not part of Python's standard library.  Python has an
> extremely high standard for what is allowed into the standard library,
> to avoid clutter that looks good at the time but then gets depreciated
> later.  It has to be (1) obviously THE best solution, (2) something the
> Python team is willing to take over maintenance of (except the new xml
> package, which is maintained by a third party).  Of course it's not
> perfect.  String, regex, ftplib and xmllib got into the standard library
> even though much better alternatives were found later.

<gripe>
Considering the content of the standard library,  I would not call the
admission criteria "extremely high", but rather "non-existent", or most
descriptively "whatever someone with commit access to the CVS tree feels
like putting there".  

Sometimes I feel like junking the whole thing, adding back in some very
small set of "core" modules (os,sys, traceback, weakref, __future__, and
other modules that are tightly coupled with the interpreter), and
bundling the rest as "optional" packages.

But I am king of nothing, so I simply say "long live the BDFL!"
</gripe>

OTOH, Python would never have made it this far, and would not be nearly
as much fun, if it were as mired in process as Java is. Long live the
BDFL!

The solution, rather than to gripe, is to push for a standardized
packaging system at least as slick and powerful as Java's .jar file
spec, so an app can simply include a dependency in its spec file and let
the package manager do the rest.

Distutils is a 500% improvement over the previous state, but still has a
ways to go.


http://jaguar.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki/PackageVersioningScheme
My own thoughts based on Sun's scheme for java.


http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0262.html
<GvR>
PEP 262 - Database of Installed Python Packages - Kuchling

I think this was a distutils Py-in-the-sky project? Maybe someone should
just implement this; I have no issues with that, but I don't
particularly feel the need myself. 
</GvR>
It seems that the BDFL is ambivalent.  But I would not say that Guido is
a "typical" python user by any stretch of the imagination.


http://aspn.activestate.com//ASPN/Reference/Products/Komodo/tutorial/pythontut/pythontutppm.html
Does anyone know anything else about PyPPM?


Supposedly ActivePython does include egenix-mx-base in recent builds.


-- Terrel

p.s. Mike. I like your scripts.