When Python *Eggs* better than Python *distutils*?? What's Eggs?

[Paul Boddie]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> > Could anyone enlighten me/us as to why the Smart Package Manager [1]
> > (written in Python, presented at EuroPython this year) isn't being more
> > closely investigated as part of a suitable solution?
>
> More closely investigated by whom, as a solution for what?  Surely
> there is someone somewhere investigating it as a solution for
> something, so your presupposition that it isn't would seem to imply
> that you have some more specific person(s) and solution(s) in mind.  :)

Well, it seemed quite odd to me when one of the leading package
management experts gives a talk at a Python conference about the
package management tool that he's developing (having already
successfully developed one or more of the better existing solutions),
and yet no-one in the vocal, blogging Python community seems to have
heard of the tool in question. One would have thought that this would
have been fertile ground for collaboration.

Not that a lack of awareness of wider trends and technologies isn't
unusual: a brief EuroPython corridor discussion of groupware standards
elicited the astonishing response from one participant that such
standards were designed for centralized server configurations when one
clearly gets the opposite impression when reading the standards
documents and actually using the related technologies in practice. (The
lack of awareness of things like Kontact and KMail - ie. anything other
than Microsoft Outlook plus Exchange - seems pretty widespread even
amongst people who supposedly "know Linux and have considered Novell
Evolution", however, so it isn't really that fair to single other
participants out over that particular point.)

> However, it would certainly appear that *someone* could investigate
> making Smart a bigger part of some "suitable solution" for something.
> :)

Indeed. I considered looking into just that, but we all only have time
for so much. ;-)

Paul