[Python-Dev] Thoughts fresh after EuroPython

[Georg Brandl]

Am 26.07.2010 13:02, schrieb Tarek Ziadé:
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> [...]
>> - A lot of things seem to be happening to make PyPI better. Is this
>> being summarized somewhere? Based on some questions I received during
>> my keynote Q&A (http://bit.ly/bdflqa) I think not enough people are
>> aware of what we are already doing in this area.
> 
> Even people very involved in packaging are not fully aware of what's
> going on. I am not for instance.
> I think that we lack to communicate and synchronize on our efforts on
> the PyPI development.

Basically, I think what you'd like to have is Martin saying "I'm going to
work on this feature", in addition to "I implemented this feature now"
afterwards.  That shouldn't be too hard.

On related news, PyPI now has a JSONRPC interface.  I'll leave it to you
to figure out how to use it, and that it wasn't Martin who added it in
secret ;)

> The last example I have in mind is that I have announced here that I
> was working on a patch for
> the checkbox problem, then Martin announced today on catalog-sig it
> was fixed by Georg and
> updated in production :)

I'd like to add to this that Martin didn't know I was working on the
patch (I wrote the patch on the day after I came home from EP), and
having worked a bit in the PyPI codebase during the sprints, I just
decided to fix this issue, which I had perceived to be quite urgent
to some people.  (Also, the patch really wasn't a huge thing.)

> I think we need to improve this: it can be a very frustrating
> experience to contribute to PyPI.

I did not experience it this way.  On the contrary, I tried to run
PyPI locally for testing purposes, but didn't want to compile and
run Postgres, so we figured how hard it was to use Sqlite instead.
Martin put in quite an effort to make it possible to have a local
instance run with an sqlite db, and I could sprint productively on
PyPI.

> Possible improvements:
> 
> - Have a PyPI component at bugs.python.org so all work on bugs/new
> features would be known and
>   followed by at the same level than other packaging components we
> maintain, and that depend on PyPI
>   (distutils, distutils2) -- e.g. drop the sourceforge tracker

I wouldn't do that -- PyPI is not distributed with Python.  (I'm
equally skeptical about Distutils2, but it will at least be part
of Python at some point in the future.)

I would support a move to a separate bugs.python.org/pypi tracker,
however.  Not having to deal with SourceForge is still a good thing.

> - Make it easier to contribute by moving the PyPI code base to
> hg.python.org. Unlike Python, this is
>   a very simple move.

+1 to that.

Georg

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