How did TimBL's speech at Python 10 go yesterday?

[Michael Chermside]

> 
> For this to work, I think you'd need to have some canonical way of
> handling versions, and enforcing compatibility.  Of course, then you're
> still left with the problems of running a program when some webserver is
> offline, or traffic is extremely heavy, or...
> 
> CPAN-like functionality of automatically making a local copy would seem
> like a much better idea to me.  (Still requires the versioning tools,
> though.)

I agree, and apparently so does TimBL. He was careful to point out that 
you don't actually go out to the web each time to get module, rather 
that the actual code is "cached" locally and there needs to be something 
  fairly smart (and definitely interactive) since the USER needs to be 
able to say what to download, how long to keep it, when (if ever) to 
update, etc.

I agree, it's a good idea, but I think the Python-version-of-CPAN 
approach is more likely to succeed than the build-it-into-import approach.

-- Michael Chermside