python's setuptools (eggs) vs ruby's gems survey/discussion

[Sion Arrowsmith]

Carl Banks  <pavlovevidence at gmail.com> wrote:
>1. setuptools will download and install dependencies on the user's
>behalf, without asking, by default.

It will *attempt* to download etc. etc. on the assumption that you
have convenient, fast network connection. If you don't....

My experience is getting on for a couple of years old now, so things
*may* have improved. But I was trying to install something (Kid, I
think) from behind a coroporate firewall which was very picky about
what outgoing connections were permissible and found trying to
satisfy the dependencies a serious headache. I can't remember why
it wasn't "just" a case of manually installing the dependencies; I
do remember that the documentation was utterly inpenetrable and had
no information on trouble-shooting as an installer.

The egg format may well be OK, but in my experience setuptools is
worse than nothing. A better option to a port of gems would be a
toolset which made eggs usable.

-- 
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