Proliferation of Python packaging formats

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 12:20 AM Skip Montanaro
<skip.montanaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is the proliferation of packaging formats in Python as nutzo as this author
> believes?
>
> https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Python-stop-screwing-distros-over.html
>
> Asking because I've never been in the business of releasing "retail" Python
> applications or packages.
>

It's a problem if you feel the need to release in every single
possible way. The XKCD in that example is a showcase of what happens
when you attempt to install in every possible way, which is usually a
consequence of everyone releasing in just one way.

He's blaming the PSF, but that's not really fair. The PSF has never
said "hey everyone, make sure you package for conda as well as posting
on PyPI". Part of the proliferation comes because there are multiple
completely independent distributions, and in the XKCD shown there, he
has installed Python at least five times from completely different
sources (the OS-provided one, two from Homebrew, one from Anaconda,
and one from python.org), and maybe installed pip into one of those as
well. Duh, of course that's going to cause problems.

Here's the reality: OS-provided Pythons are always going to exist, and
they will always have a place (because I should be able to say "apt
install <X>" without having to worry about whether that's going to
download from PyPI), and they'll never have 100% of everything exactly
how you want it, so you will always have more than one place where
packages can be installed, more than one package format. And it's not
the PSF's fault, nor the PSF's responsibility.

The massive complexities come when people aren't satisfied with the
status quo, and create a new thing. The blog mentions tox, flit,
conda, and poetry, all of which are third-party distributions or
package managers. Is the PSF supposed to tell people "don't create new
package managers for any Python code"? Seriously?

Blog dismissed as whining.

ChrisA