[Distutils] Python people want CPAN and how the latter came about

[Ben Finney]

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com writes:

> What's with the interest in having packages hosted on PyPI?

Economies of scale.

There are already numerous tools that work (to greater or lesser degree)
with PyPI, and the developers of PyPI have the burden of compatibility
with published interfaces.

That gives much greater confidence that access to new versions of a
distribution will remain accessible in the same way as thousands of
other packages, which in turn greatly reduces the cognitive and manual
load on down-stream projects working with those distributions.

As a small example: with PyPI, I already know how to set up a Debian
package that will point to a specific uploaded version of the pristine
source, and can then have confidence the same URL will always refer to
that same version. The same system then ensures that newer versions will
be in a predictable location when they are uploaded.

Having already figured that out for one code base hosted on PyPI, I
don't have to figure it out any more for other code bases also hosted at
PyPI. That is a big attractor of a consistent package repository with a
rich standard interface.

-- 
 \             “No smoothen the lion.” —lion cage, zoo, Czech Republic |
  `\                                                                   |
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Ben Finney