[Python-ideas] [Python-Dev] Python 2.x and 3.x use survey, 2014 edition

[Todd]

On Dec 12, 2014 6:41 AM, "Nathaniel Smith" <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> On 11 Dec 2014 15:14, "Donald Stufft" <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
> >
> >
> > This information is a few months old mostly because I’m lazy and
creating the information is a pain in the ass.
> >
> > Total Downloads (For reference): http://d.stufft.io/image/2N293l3v2S1c
> > % Downloads for Python Version: http://d.stufft.io/image/2g1T2U140h1O
> > % Downloads for Python Version (Zoomed to Py3):
http://d.stufft.io/image/0B233A151k1k
> > Total Downloads for Python Version:
http://d.stufft.io/image/3f3f3g3P181M
> > Bonus - OS Downloads: http://d.stufft.io/image/021v383I0O2c
> >
> > All of the above filter out anything that has an extremely small number
of downloads so as not to overwhelm the graphs with a ton of small barely
used things.
>
> Neat data, thanks for sharing!
>
> I do wonder how meaningful it is, though, because my impression is that
PyPI download numbers are overwhelmingly driven by automated test and
deployment systems (e.g. Travis-CI) that end up downloading the same
dependencies dozens of times a day. Among other things this would explain
how it could be that Linux downloads appear to outnumber Windows downloads
by an unbelievable factor of ~30x (!). This doesn't invalidate the numbers,
of course, but it does mean they may only represent one specific slice of
Python's userbase.

Translating these numbers to actual usage in general is hard.  The way in
which python and packages are distributed on different platforms is very
different.  How comfortable the average user is with using the command-line
vs. just relying on pre-built packages or installers is different.

> Another way to get a sense of py2 versus py3 usage is to look at download
counts for version-specific wheels on non-linux systems. Some quick playing
with vanity suggests that lxml windows downloads are about 10% py3 (even
though the only py3 builds they offer are for 32-bit py3.2!), and numpy osx
downloads are about 19% py3. I don't know how representative these numbers
are either, but they're dramatically higher than what you found. If
someone's curious it might be worth trying this approach more
systematically.

Would it be possible to add an API, flag, or argument to pypi that lets
automated services like Travis and py2pack to identify themselves as not
being ordinary downloads?  Of course this would depend on the services
making use of it, but they seem to be trying to be good members of the
ecosystem so I would like to think they would.
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