[Python-Dev] Raising objections

[Anthony Baxter]

On Thursday 20 April 2006 03:46, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> It is *precisely* my concern that this happens. For whatever
> reason, writing packaging-and-deployment software is totally
> unsexy. This is why setuptools is a one-man show, and this is why
> the original distutils authors ran away after they convinced
> everybody that distutils should be part of Python. If distutils is
> now abandoned and replaced with something else, the same story will
> happen again: the developers will run away, 

Well, I've seen no indication that this is Phillip's plan. If it is, 
could he tell us now? <wink> 

> the package gets 
> abandoned, and, after a few years of sadness, a new, smart
> developer will come along and provide a super replacement. And that
> will repeat in cycles of roughly 10 years.

Well, I'm planning on trying to get across the setuptools codebase 
before 2.5 final. 

> We have to stop this. If distutils has flaws, fix them. Never ever
> even think about rewriting software:

I started looking at this. The number of complaints I got when I 
started on this that it would break the existing distutils based 
installers totally discouraged me. In addition, the existing 
distutils codebase is ... not good. 

It is flatly not possible to "fix" distutils and preserve backwards 
compatibility. Sometimes you _have_ to rewrite. I point to 
urllib->urllib2, asyncore->twisted, rfc822/mimelib/&c->email. 
This approach means that people's existing code continues to work, 
there's a separate installer of the new code that is available for 
older versions of Python, plus we have the newer features. 

> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Yes. I remember that piece. In particular, he wrote the original rant 
about this about Mozilla/Firefox. How did that work out again? Oh, 
that's right - we now have a much, much more successful and usable 
browser. 

Anthony
-- 
Anthony Baxter     <anthony at interlink.com.au>
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.