Jim Fulton wrote:
On Sep 23, 2008, at 5:44 PM, Rick Warner wrote:
Jeff Younker wrote:
I have to say, as a developer, and a system administrator, I like
setuptools. It does
what I need. Could it be better? Sure. For what I use python for
on a day-to-day
basis it makes my life a thousand times better than it was before
setuptools. Nothing
ruins your day more than spending *hours* tracing down package
dependencies
just to get the *one* package you need to allow you to perform some
crucial task.
It's even worse when you have to do it on multiple architectures.
Perl's package location and installation system (CPAN) is one of the
primary facts
contributing to its success. Perl is a pig. It's a charming pig
that can do lots of tricks,
but a pig none the less. What makes it shine is CPAN. And here's
the catch: CPAN
isn't really any better than setuptools. It's got warts and nuts
all over the place, but
it works.
And CPAN has some HUGE advantages over setuptools: it is designed as
a repository, and it is replicated. Which means it is dependable.
Anyone who suffered through the multiple outages of PyPI (which in
not replicated) over the past year or so, or the ongoing outages of
the many repositories across the web to which PyPI directs
users/processes, can understand why this is important.
Actually, PyPI is replicated. See, for example,
http://download.zope.org/simple/.
It may be that some of the mirrors should be better advertised.
A half-hearted effort. at best, after the problems last year. When I
configure a CPAN client (once per user) I create a list of replicas I
want to search for any query from a list of hundreds of replicas
distributed around the world. From then on the client automatically
switches to one of my selected replicas when one does not respond in a
timely manner. The minimal set of recent PyPI replicas are neither well
advertised, and are not automatically searched, so therefore
ineffective. And that is a mere tip of the iceberg, since PyPI is just
the index, and the repositories are for the most part not replicated.
CPAN sites are both index and repository. Setuptools and PyPI are
light years behind CPAN in regards to creating a usable, reliable method
of package deployment.
- rick
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