[Python-Dev] Software integrators vs end users (was Re: Language Summit notes)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 18 April 2014 17:22, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
> On Apr 18, 2014, at 5:08 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 18 April 2014 16:50, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>>> So I’m not really worried about a competition or anything. I’m mostly worried
>>> about confusion of users. What you’re suggestion we give to use is *two* ways
>>> to install Python packages (and 2 or 3 ways to virtualize a Python instance).
>>
>> Note that one of my requirements was that "pip install foo" *must* do
>> the right thing in conda environments (whatever we decide the "right
>> thing" means in that context). It was buried at the end of a long
>> email though, so it would have been easy to miss.
>>
>> That means the instructions to new users can be simple and consistent
>> - use pip commands to manage Python things, conda commands to manage
>> other stuff. They'll likely discover in fairly short order that the
>> conda commands also work for Python things, but it can be explained
>> that not all environments are conda environments, and hence pip works
>> in more situations than conda does, but at the cost of being specific
>> to Python packages.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Nick.
>>
>> --
>> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>
> Thinking about that and the implications of it.
>
> Next question, where even is the code for “Anaconda”? I tried to download it
> from their website and it’s behind an email form, I saw a link for github issues
> but it’s in a dedicated “anaconda-issues” repo which doesn’t have any code
> associated with it.
>
> Also to be honest i’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of Python.org pushing
> a platform where the company that develops the platform sells Add-ons to that
> platform. So while Anaconda itself may be free and open source the fact that
> the Anaconda distribution is a gateway to a particular company’s paid add ons
> makes me feel a bit like a government sponsored monopoly kind of thing? I’m
> not using good words here to describe what I mean, but it feels kind of icky to me.

I actually agree and it wouldn't necessarily make sense for *Anaconda*
itself to be the promoted sumo distribution. I'm more interested in
the idea of making a sumo distribution the default recommended entry
point, and handling the issues of independent curation and
redistribution that would come with that, as well as the mechanics of
how to actually handle installation and updates from the end user
perspective.

Perhaps we can get the "pip install ipython" experience to a good
place faster than I currently expect, and we can duck this entire
question (at least for Windows and Mac OS X).

Regardless, I think we've drifted far enough into speculative
territory to be off-topic for python-dev. This isn't a question we're
going to resolve in a hurry, and the near term focus should likely be
on improving the numpy+wheel story, since that's valuable regardless
of what happens with the python.org download pages. While that is
ongoing, people can mull over the various possibilities independently.

Regards,
Nick.

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