[Distutils] [Catalog-sig] packaging terminology confusion

[John Gabriele]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 8:14 PM, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn <zooko at zooko.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, 2010-01-09, at 11:47 , Brad Allen wrote:
>
>> Now I understand that your 'project' concept probably corresponds to an
>> entry in PyPI which is associated with multiple releases
>
> Yep.  Or actually the "project" is the thing that a few hackers like to
> spend their time on.  It is the thing that evolves over time, endures forks
> and personnel changes, etc.  The page on PyPI is best understood as being
> the web page on PyPI which is here to inform you about the state of the
> project.
>
> I tell people at hacker meetups that I work on the Tahoe-LAFS project.  They
> nod their heads.  I'm going to continue saying that, and they are going to
> continue nodding their heads, regardless of what we on this mailing list
> decide.
>
>> When you have a release ready, what do you do with it? You 'package' it,
>> of course. You don't 'project' it, and you don't 'parcel' it. What is the
>> result of the 'packaging' activity? It's a 'package' of course.
>
> Bingo!  And, this is true regardless of whether you're working on a project
> written in Python or in another language or in a combination of languages.
>
>> Maybe it's just wrong to call the __init__.py directories 'packages',
>> because they are really just a piece of what is getting packaged.
>
> Bingo!  A "package" is something that you deliver to someone else and they
> use it.  You don't deliver __init__.py directories to people.  __init__.py
> directories are not packages.
>

+1

If it were possible to rename "package" (the __init__.py kind), I
might suggest going with "battery", as in, "a whole battery of
modules".

( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/battery )

Perhaps folks who run projects that distribute large numbers of
related packages/batteries could somehow distribute them together as
... oh, I dunno, ... a battery pack. :)

Also, fits well with "batteries included" motto. :)

http://python.org/images/batteries-included.jpg

---John