[Distutils] [Catalog-sig] packaging terminology confusion

[Ben Finney]

Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 10:01, Glyph Lefkowitz <glyph at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
> > This is precisely what I meant to recommend: "Parcel" would be a
> > good replacement word for the Python-specific meaning of
> > "distribution".  I'm sorry if I was ambiguous and created confusion.
>
> I think it sounds too much like a python-specific word, like "egg".

Agreed.

At this point, people are just going to keep calling this entity a
“package”, consistent with the majority of other languages and systems
out there.

We'd have more chance, I think, of changing Python's concept “namespace
that behaves like a module and can have sub-modules” — currently called
“package” — to a different word and encouraging adoption of that new
term.

Neither terminology change would be easy, but trying to change a raft of
other concepts to Python-specific terms seems less likely to succeed
than picking a new term for a concept that is *already* Python-specific.

-- 
 \     “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, |
  `\                               neat, and wrong.” —Henry L. Mencken |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney