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Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view]

 

 

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jimjjewett at gmail

Jul 18, 2009, 1:07 PM

Post #1 of 6 (730 views)
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Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view]

Michael Foord wrote:
>> I agree. People with versioning issues *should* be using virtualenv.

Tarek Ziadé replied (and several people later agreed)
> Let's remove site-packages from Python then.

What about those people *without* versioning issues?

I have no qualms suggesting that package management programs avoid the
use of site-packages. Such programs do need to cater to edge cases.

But a single drop-it-in directory works great for the vast majority of
*my* needs; requiring me to drink the Kool-Aid from a specific package
management system just to get access to any add-ons -- even those I
wrote myself in pure python -- would be a huge step backwards.

-jJ
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pje at telecommunity

Jul 18, 2009, 1:22 PM

Post #2 of 6 (700 views)
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Re: Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view] [In reply to]

At 04:07 PM 7/18/2009 -0400, Jim Jewett wrote:
>Michael Foord wrote:
> >> I agree. People with versioning issues *should* be using virtualenv.
>
>Tarek Ziadé replied (and several people later agreed)
> > Let's remove site-packages from Python then.
>
>What about those people *without* versioning issues?
>
>I have no qualms suggesting that package management programs avoid the
>use of site-packages. Such programs do need to cater to edge cases.
>
>But a single drop-it-in directory works great for the vast majority of
>*my* needs; requiring me to drink the Kool-Aid from a specific package
>management system just to get access to any add-ons -- even those I
>wrote myself in pure python -- would be a huge step backwards.

IIUC, the new "user" directories supported by the 'site' module would
fill this purpose. That is, rather than having a site-wide packages
directory, there'd just be the user-specific package directories.

(That having been said, I'm not actually in favor of the idea.)

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david.lyon at preisshare

Jul 18, 2009, 5:49 PM

Post #3 of 6 (688 views)
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Re: Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view] [In reply to]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:07:39 -0400, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett [at] gmail>
wrote:
> What about those people *without* versioning issues?
>
> I have no qualms suggesting that package management programs avoid the
> use of site-packages. Such programs do need to cater to edge cases.

I'm just wondering how that is possible? Given that a package management
system (pythonpkgmgr - for example) is a tool to assist in the management
of packages in site-packages.

If you take away the drop in directory (site-packages), effectively
you're taking away the place for system drop in packages. I can't see
the point in that.

> But a single drop-it-in directory works great for the vast majority of
> *my* needs; requiring me to drink the Kool-Aid from a specific package
> management system just to get access to any add-ons -- even those I
> wrote myself in pure python -- would be a huge step backwards.

Where you keep your packages is entirely up to you.

Even with the Python Package Manager, you can still have unversioned
packages in project directories. That doesn't change.

And you can still have unversioned packages in site-packages.

So I can't really see that having a Package Manager program
takes your use case scenerio backwards because it wouldn't really
change it.

(repeating)
> But a single drop-it-in directory works great for the vast majority of
> *my* needs;

That's exactly what site-packages is.....

So it isn't clear why you want to remove the thing that you are
advocating works so great....

David

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ncoghlan at gmail

Jul 18, 2009, 11:07 PM

Post #4 of 6 (690 views)
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Re: Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view] [In reply to]

David Lyon wrote:
> So it isn't clear why you want to remove the thing that you are
> advocating works so great....

Jim was quoting someone *else* that had suggested removing it (I'm not
sure how serious the original suggestion actually was though).

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan [at] gmail | Brisbane, Australia
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rdmurray at bitdance

Jul 19, 2009, 6:08 AM

Post #5 of 6 (682 views)
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Re: Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view] [In reply to]

On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 at 16:07, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> David Lyon wrote:
>> So it isn't clear why you want to remove the thing that you are
>> advocating works so great....
>
> Jim was quoting someone *else* that had suggested removing it (I'm not
> sure how serious the original suggestion actually was though).

It was Tarek, and I'm pretty sure it was in the nature of what
rhetoricians (among others) call "reductio ad absurdum". But
Tarek would have to let us know for sure, since it seems from
subsequent discussion that the notion is not _completely_ absurd,
just mostly :)

--David
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ziade.tarek at gmail

Jul 19, 2009, 8:15 AM

Post #6 of 6 (681 views)
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Re: Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view] [In reply to]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 3:08 PM, R. David Murray<rdmurray [at] bitdance> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 at 16:07, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>>
>> David Lyon wrote:
>>>
>>> So it isn't clear why you want to remove the thing that you are
>>> advocating works so great....
>>
>> Jim was quoting someone *else* that had suggested removing it (I'm not
>> sure how serious the original suggestion actually was though).
>
> It was Tarek, and I'm pretty sure it was in the nature of what
> rhetoricians (among others) call "reductio ad absurdum".  But
> Tarek would have to let us know for sure, since it seems from
> subsequent discussion that the notion is not _completely_ absurd,
> just mostly :)
>

Yes, well, maybe we should go back to Python-ideas to continue this
discussion, :)

What made me say that, is the unecessary complexity of the situation
because we have right now :

"Python the application" v.s. "Applications that uses Python the interpreter"

So we have:

A - a drop-it-in directory were we can put packages and modules

B - installers that adds automatically packages and modules in the
drop-it-in directory

C - applications that uses these installers to install themselves and
their dependencies in the drop-it-in directory.

D - a tool like virtualenv that duplicates a Python installation so
this drop-in-in directory is not shared globally

C - installation documentation that tells you to use virtualenv to
create a custom environment
so you are sure not to break dependencies. (But you can break
them nevertheless because using virtualenv
is not enforced :) )

E - OS packagers that installs all distributions in the drop-it-in
directory (or a similar place)


So if you remove the global site-packages, "Python the application"
dissapear in favor of "Python the interpreter",
and people have to point a local, non-shared drop-it-in directory to
run any python application that uses extra modules:

1- For Jim's case, the per-user site packages (PEP 370) can be used
2- For every application it can be a local directory loaded in
sys.path at startup
3- For OS packagers a single directory where they maintain a
collection of packages and modules for their system.

But unfortunately, the problem remains because of (3) : OS packagers
will fight against applications (2) that deal with their own
dependencies to avoid having duplicate packages in their system.

That's why a shared space, not loaded at startup by site.py, that
knows how to handle multiple versions for the same distribution
would be required. Every script (eg application) would decide which
version to use, or use the default version by default.
And a smart PEP 302 loader/importer would get the right versions.

Regards
Tarek
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