[Zope3-dev] Re: Re: More thoughts on packaging

[Anthony Baxter]

Jeff Kowalczyk wrote:
> Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
>>Those people who don't like ZCML because it's too verbose can design their
>>own better 'compact' syntax and convert to ZCML from that. I'd be very
>>curious to see those efforts and may even participate. Those who don't
>>like ZCML as it's not Python..well, they'll have to change their minds. :)
> 
> 
> YAML?
> 
> http://yaml.org/spec/

YAML feels very very hackish, like an accumulation of features rather 
than a well-designed language. The magic line noise formatting makes me 
recoil in horror - I find reST annoying enough in that respect, and so 
don't use it much at all. Trying to do what is essentially a programing 
task (packaging) in YAML seems like a sure path to insanity.

As far as the original point (which was 'packaging systems') I can't see 
that an XML syntax is going to win many friends in Python land, and so 
unless the Zope community wants to maintain their own packaging system, 
a compromise on something that's a bit easier to write may be needed.

As far as the claim that a Python-based system "isn't declarative" - 
well, that's obviously a fault with the current distutils approach, not 
a problem with python itself. Being in Python has allowed people to put 
little bits and pieces in their setup.py's to do things "a little 
differently" -- unless you're proposing to build something that will be 
all things to all people, you're going to be making a much more limited 
system than what we have now. Note that, for instance, RPM's 'spec' 
format has many possibilities to call out to a shell to do things that 
are "a little bit different", so we're not the only ones who've needed 
this flexibility.

Anthony

-- 
Anthony Baxter     <anthony at interlink.com.au>
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.