[pyxl] xlrd 0.7.2 released!

[Chris Withers]

On 22/02/2012 23:17, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> I can see where that would be preferred when managing multiple versions of
> Python, but not when using a single version.

Sorry, I don't agree. It is *never* a good idea to install packages 
globally. Using virtualenv or similar (buildout, etc) gives you a 
single, cross platform way of not ending up with a mess of a python 
installation where you have a bunch of libraries of random versions 
installed, often with no way of finding out what version they are or how 
to uninstall them.

Heaven forbid you want to use or develop more than one project per 
machine; then you end up with different projects needing different 
versions of the same libraries and you're screwed. ;-)

> The pip system does a good job o
> managing package installs in the global context.

Ask the pip maintainers whether they'd suggest using pip on the global 
system python or inside a virtualenv...

> see the point. On Windows the installer is the point of entry for 'package'
> management, going outside that can get confusing.

"Python" should be though of as the application, not any individual 
library...

> I also understand setting up a
> Windows installer is non-trivial.

It isn't a lot of work from what I remember, I just don't like 
encouraging bad practices...

> offing, the OP might find it easier to use the Python packaging from here on out.

What is "the Python packaging" you refer to?

> xlrd3                     - Library for developers to extract data from
> Microsoft Excel (tm) spreadsheet files
> xlrd1                     - library for extracting data from Microsoft Excel
> spreadsheet files

I would avoid both of these like the plague, it's a shame the people who 
dumped them on PyPI don't put up a similar warning :-(

cheers,

Chris

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