On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 10:43 PM, John Gabriele <[email protected]> wrote: > 3. People don't like calling those MyProject-1.0.2.tgz thingies > "distributions". They keep calling them packages, and when you correct > them, they say, "[sigh], fine. [eyes roll] 'distribution'."
Interesting. I've never observed any evidence of that. Yes, some people call them packages. Others call them distributions. Even outside the Python realm. Of course, if you'd rather call them tarballs, I won't mind. Even if you don't use tar to make them. :-) Or they could be GBOFs (Great Balls of Fire). As for the "get a package from the PyPI" verbage, I don't think that's an issue. I suspect most distributions include packages rather than a handful of separate modules these days. Nor is it wrong to use a looser term (still widely accepted in the broader community) for the things gotten from PyPI. The point of carefully defined terminology is primarily to make sure that relatively formal communication, such as technical documentation, can be carried out both effectively and efficiently. There's no need to dictate terminology for casual communication, where context is usually sufficient. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at gmail.com> "Chaos is the score upon which reality is written." --Henry Miller _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
