Python does not play well with others

[John Nagle]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au> writes:
> 
>>>Python still isn't ready for prime time in the web hosting world.
>>
>>That doesn't follow. It's just as valid to say that the web hosting
>>providers (that you've interacted with so far) aren't ready to support
>>the Python functionality you want.
> 
> 
> I'd say the functionality that John wants is the same that pretty much
> everyone wants, and it's much easier to get for other languages than
> for Python.

     That's about it.

     What's so striking is that this was a surprise.  One would think
from what one reads about Python that it just works.

     I've been able to pound through these problems.  I finally
got M2Crypto, Python, and MySQLdb all working on a shared
hosting server.  But it was quite a bit of work.  I gave up on
getting the hosting provider to install current versions.

     So I just spent four hours struggling with the build procedure
for M2Crypto, to get it to build with a combination of versions of OpenSSL,
M2Crypto, and SWIG that aren't the latest, but are supposed to work.
(Hint: you need to define "__i386__" or other machine if appropriate
as a command line argument to SWIG, so that OpenSSL's older conditional
includes work right.)

     This is really a build system management and coordination issue.
Python has only two kinds of modules - nailed into the distribution,
or external and unsupported.  Whether or not something is supported
should be independent of whether it's built by the main build file.
Components which have external dependencies, like SSL, M2Crypto,
and MySQLdb don't fit well into that model.  They need to undergo
regression testing with each new Python distribution, but they don't
really need to be part of the main build.  Right now, SSL is too
far inside, while the other two are too far outside.  A middle
ground would help.

    Otherwise, you get version hell.

     				John Nagle