[Distutils] The Python Packaging Ecosystem (of Nick) Support for other programming languages

[Nick Coghlan]

On 8 April 2017 at 20:05, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 6:55 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7 April 2017 at 15:26, Thomas Güttler <guettliml at thomas-guettler.de> wrote:
>>> Why is having blue sky ideas rude? AFAIK the word "rude" means "offensively impolite or bad-mannered."
>>
>> Ideas are easy to come by - we have no shortage of them.
>
> Bad ideas are surely easy to come by, but, at least in my experience,
> it often takes a bit of discussion to work out which ones these are.

Indeed, but it's an entirely different matter to post suggestions for
specific, concrete, ideas for changes to the Python plugin management
ecosystem than it is to post:

"""
Why not do "thinking in sets" here and see python just as one item in
the list of a languages?

Let's dream: All languages should be supported in the ever best
packaging solution of the future.
"""

While citing a post that specifically explains why such a project
would be out of scope for PyPA & distutils-sig, since we maintain and
provide plugin management tools and interoperability standards for
Python runtimes, not general purpose infrastructure management for
arbitrary software components. It isn't like we don't already know
that problem exists, nor that we consider it unimportant in the larger
scheme of things - it's just not a problem we're attempting to solve
or help with *here*.

>> Hearing from folks that say "I'm working on a project to improve X,
>> can you give me some advice?" is generally wonderful, but "Someone
>> (else) should totally build this thing that I wish existed" is
>> typically just noise, and
>> "I have never personally done anything for any of you, but I want you
>> all to imagine you work for me and have to work on the things I care
>> about" is extraordinarily self-entitled behaviour.
>
> Wishing to avoid this criticism I humbly submit the pip / manylinux /
> macOS packaging work I do for the scientific Python stack.

Thank you for that work!

> That done, as you imply, no-one can force us volunteers to do any
> particular piece of work, so, although self-entitlement may be
> unattractive, it's not particularly threatening.

Yeah, it only becomes irritating when it's persistent - most folks are
able to recognise that they should drop a topic in a given venue when
nobody else expresses any interest in it, and it's a rare few that
will still attempt to persist even after they're explicitly told to
drop it as being off-topic.

>  Of course,
> sometimes, people who aren't doing anything at present, suggest ideas
> that are useful, and with the right encouragement, actually do start
> to help.  I've certainly seen that happen with my other developer hats
> on.

Likewise (and in terms of my own contributions to PyPA/distutils-sig,
they've been far more extensive in the form of mentoring and support
for the folks actually doing the work than they have been in terms of
code or documentation), and it's why the first reaction to off-topic
posts should always be to default to coaching folks on the purpose of
the channel.

It's only in light of persistent attempts to reshape the channel to a
different purpose without first actively contributing to helping the
group to achieve its existing purpose that problems really start to
arise (as in this thread).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia