On 06/28/2012 06:36 AM, Benoît Bryon wrote:
Le 27/06/2012 13:34, Antoine Pitrou a écrit :
Similarly, I think the section about private projects ("Private
(including closed-source) projects use a namespace") should be removed.
It is not our duty to promote naming standards for private (i.e.
internal) projects.
The intention in the proposed PEP is to promote standards
for general Python usage, which implicitely includes both public
and private use.
The proposed PEP tries to explain how the conventions
apply in most use cases. Public and private scopes are mentioned
explicitely because they were identified as valuable use cases.
Here are some reasons why the "private code" use case has
been identified as valuable:
* New Python developers (or more accurately new distribution
authors) may wonder "What makes a good name?", even if they are
working in a private area. Guidelines covering private code would
be welcome.
* At work, I already had discussions about naming patterns for
closed source projects. These discussions consumed some energy
made the team focus on some "less valuable" topics. We searched
for an official convention and didn't find one. We made choices
but none of us was really satisfied about it. An external
arbitration from a trusted authority would have been welcome,
even if we were making closed-source software.
* As Paul said, "personal code often ends up more widely used than
originally envisaged". So following the convention from the start
may help.
* Here, the PEP already covers (or tries to) most public code use
cases. It's quite easy to extend it to private code. I feel
drawbacks are negligible compared to potential benefits.
.. note:: IMHO, main drawback is "read this long document".
* Isn't it obvious that, at last, people do what they want to in
private code? In fact, they also do in public code. I mean the
document is an informational PEP. It recommends to apply conventions
but the actual choice is left to developers.
That said, would the changes below improve the document?
* Keep the parts about private and closed-source code, but add a
note to insist on "in private code, you obviously do what you want
to" and "be aware that personal code often ends up more widely used
than originally envisaged".
* At the beginning of the document, add a section like
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#a-foolish-consistency-is-the-hobgoblin-of-little-minds
Another option would have been to deal with "general Python code"
and don't mention "public" and "private" areas, i.e. implicitely
cover both. I haven't followed this way because it is implicit.
Also, I don't see what's so important about using
your company's name as a top-level namespace. You don't need it for
conflict avoidance: you can just as well use distinctive project names.
Using company's name as top-level namespace has been proven a
good practice:
* avoids clashes and confusion with public projects, i.e. don't
create a "cms" private project because there could be a "cms"
project on PyPI.
* makes it easy to release the code as open-source: don't change
the project name.
* if there is no reason at all for the project to contain the
company name (i.e. the project is not specific to the company),
why not realeasing it as open source? (with a one-level name)
Using company's name is not the only option. But, as far as I know,
it fits most use cases, which is enough (and required) for a
convention.
Another option is to use any arbitrary name as top-level namespace.
You can. If an arbitrary name seems obvious to you, feel free to
use it. But, in most cases, company's name is an obvious choice.
So, would you appreciate a change so that:
* company name is recommended as a best practice.
* but any arbitrary name can be used.
Could be something in:
1. "For private projects, use company name (or any unique arbitrary name)
as top-level namespace".
2. "For private projects, use any arbitrary name (company name is
generally a good choice) as top-level namespace".
3. "For private projects, use a top-level namespace (company name is
generally a good choice, but you can use any unique arbitrary name)."
It's probably always a reasonable idea to use a brand-prefixed namespace
for *private* packages but in my experience it's almost always a bad
idea to publish any set of otherwise-unrelated packages that share a
branded namespace prefix to PyPI.
I know this because I've been involved with it at least twice with
"zope." and "repoze." brands/namespaces. The meaning of both of those
namespaces has become soft over time and both now mean basically "this
code was created by a group of people" instead of "this code is useful
under a circumstance or for a purpose". Those namespaces are both the
moral equivalent of a "garbage barge" class in development: code related
to the namespace might do anything ("zope" now means a company and two
completely different application servers; "repoze" never really meant
anything, it was always a pure brand).
People typically look for code on PyPI that solves a problem, and
branding in namespacing there is usually confusing. E.g. there are many
highly-general useful things in both the zope. and repoze. namespace
packages, but people are skittish about the meaning of the namespaces
and tend to look for a "more generic" solution. They are often right to
do so. Putting a package in a "garbage barge" namespace does make it
easy to avoid conflicts when publishing to PyPI, but it also makes it
easy to avoid doing other release management tasks like creating good
docs and making sure your package doesn't depend inappropriately on
other unrelated same-namespace packages. And even if a particular
distribution from a namespace has great docs and great release
management practices, it's often the case that the distribution is
ignored by potential consumers because it's just too hard to wade
through the meaning of the branding.
So I'd suggest that if the namespace represents a brand, the brand
should be related to a concrete bit of software (e.g. django, pyramid)
rather than a project or a company to avoid the fate of the
above-mentioned namespace. At least for *public* releases of software;
for private ones it matters a lot less.
- C
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