[Zope3-dev] Re: More thoughts on packaging

[Martijn Faassen]

Tres Seaver wrote:

>> Speaking as another large package maintainer, I'd like setup.py to be 
>> either nonexistent, or automatically generated from something else 
>> that's modular.
>
>
> +1.  The configuration metadata in a typical setup.py can *never* be 
> introspected, for intsance, short of writing bytecode hacks to pick 
> apart the arguments passed to setup().

+1 too.

>> I'm certainly -1 on using XML for this, and I don't have a problem 
>> with using Python syntax.  But the single file approach has got to go.
>
>
> -1 for Python syntax;  Turing-completeness is a *disadvantage* in a 
> configuration language (e.g., why is ZCML not in Python?  why ZConfig?)


+1 to not using Python for configuration languages. Python is of course 
convenient on the short run, but I suspect will be harder on the long 
run. If packages were already explicitly declarative some of the 
problems Phillip Eby mentions would not have been an issue.

Using Python instead of declarations is already *hurting* the evolution 
of the packaging system, because people are maintaining their local 
Python hacks instead of thinking about what configuration options are 
really needed in the central packaging system. It focuses short-term 
behavior on fixing the wrong problem.

> WRT the format, I am agnostic about the spelling, but anti-NIH 
> suggests that we should adopt a widely-supported parseable format:


As long as it's declarative and doesn't look like Procmail or M4 macros 
or whatever, I'm fine too. :)

Regards,

Martijn