[Tutor] Percentage of installations without setuptools (Was if __name__=='__main__' ...)

[Thomas Güttler]

Am 13.08.2017 um 02:12 schrieb Steven D'Aprano:
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 02:35:00PM +0200, Thomas Güttler wrote:
> 
>> How high is the percentage of python installation which don't have
>> setuptools?
>>
>> I have no clue. Is it 5%, 10%, 15% ...?
>>
>> I know there is no definite answer to this question. But you can guess this
>> better than me.
> 
> Somewhere between 0.1% and 99.9%.
> 
> For what little it is worth, out of the 9 versions of Python I have
> installed on my personal machines, setuptools is installed for 4 of
> them. On work machines, 2 out of 5 have setuptools installed. So in
> total, 6 out of 14 Python installations I have access to include
> setuptools. So 57% *don't* have setup tools.
> 
> Really Thomas, why do you care?

Good question. Why do I care ...

If there is no solid ground, no sane defaults, then young and talented programmers
waste time. I just don't know why, but this makes me feel pain.

> If you want to require setuptools for
> your packages, go right ahead. If you want to tell people that using
> setuptools is the best choice, or the most popular choice, or the
> smartest choice, do so.
> 
> Just don't say it is the "default choice" because that is silly. The
> whole purpose of something being *default* is so that you DON'T have to
> make a choice. Obviously that doesn't apply to choosing a packaging
> library, and especially not to choosing a packaging language which may
> not even be present. Even if its only missing 1% of the time.

> As a third-party author, the sorts of people who don't have setuptools
> installed either won't be installing your software at all, or will be
> installing it from source.
> 
> 

-- 
Thomas Guettler http://www.thomas-guettler.de/