[Zope3-dev] Re: Packaging pre-proposal/notes

[Martijn Faassen]

Philipp von Weitershausen wrote:
> >       - Work with the Python community at large to extend distutils
> >         to manage information necessary for packaging and create a
> >         simple package-management system for python.
> 
> I see why you would like the Python community to help solve this 
> problem. I hope you do realize though that we will depend on them in 
> this issue. Now, it might be an advantage for you having the majority of 
> PythonLabs right next door to your office; but that doesn't change the 
> fact that we're going to involve a much bigger community with different 
> ideas, etc.

Note that "The Python Community" has had several attempts to improve the
packaging situation for Python (CPAN for Python projects, etc) for
the last 6 years at least. Eventually people realized that it was hard to
introduce all of this at once, and they started working in steps:

 * distutils

 * simple packaging metadata

 * system on python.org (pypi) that indexes this information

As long as we realize that this won't be easy, I guess we could introduce
new steps:

 * declarative package information used by setup.py

 * declaration for dependency structure

> The inevitable result is that this process will take a long time until 
> the ideas are set, the infrastructure is in place and stable software is 
> produces. We might make it for Python 2.4, but only if we're lucky.

Agreed. I also think the attempt should be made to improve the common
infrastructure nonetheless, even if we think 2.4 is hard to reach for
inclusion.

[snip]
> The fact that the packaging/distutils issue will take long time, 
> shouldn't stop us from rearranging the Zope3 package hierarchy, though. 

Agreed. We shouldn't start to wait for possible future abilities to start
doing what we can to make life easier *now*.

[snip]
> We also will have to face the fact that we might not get the 
> packaging/dependency management system until after Zope X3.0 has been 
> released.

"Might not get" is hopefully "certainly won't have". If Zope X3.0 wants to
be released this year we'd better not wait for a dependency management
system to be done before it. :)

Regards,

Martijn