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

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 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.

If you want my frank opinion, I think that's very pathetic. We're not 
even close to what Perl has...

> 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

Yes. I really hope that it'll be possible to use the already existing 
infrastructure (distutils, metadata, pypi). I personally have my doubts 
with both the solution with respect to the infrastructure and the 
time-frame. Remember how Zope came up with its own interface definitions 
because Python didn't have them?... :)

>>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. :)

Yes, I totally agree. I should have phrased it like that.

Philipp