The language vs. the environment

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> * breathe some life into the catalog-sig:
    >> http://www.python.org/sigs/catalog-sig/

    Paul> We've got the Vaults and siphon has been around and yet failed to
    Paul> maintain a high profile, as far as I've read on this list/group.
    Paul> Interestingly, the CPAN issue just keeps coming up. Myself, I
    Paul> wrote a script to query the Vaults, and I even have functionality
    Paul> for finding dependencies, although with the "screen-scraping"
    Paul> techniques in use, my code is possibly not that reliable.
    Paul> Nevertheless, I see a future for "grass roots", really simple code
    Paul> in this area, and surely writing that code would be *much* easier
    Paul> than writing a PEP about some banal language change.

There was a lightning talk at IPC10 on Gideon, a prototype Python
repository.  Since it's implemented as a Zope product I think you sort of
get an XML-RPC API for free, which would beat screen scraping hands down.
You can check it out:

    http://www.zope.org/Members/k_vertigo/Products/Gideon

A prototype server is at:

    http://66.123.57.58:8080

Thanks to Andrew Kuchling for the references.

    >> * find a Python bug without a proposed fix and write one (there are
    >>   currently between 250 and 300 open bug reports):
    >>   http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=105470

    Paul> Although one might think that this requires a "Python internals
    Paul> skill level" of at least 7 out of 10, there are probably porting
    Paul> issues that could usefully be resolved by people with access to
    Paul> the right hardware.

Correctamundo.  I am in the midst of composing a note looking for new
developers, to be posted shortly. 

Skip