Re: .py endings or no .py endings for scientific packages
On 19/06/18 14:03, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi,
>
> sorry for my silence - this week I'm busy with real life mostly.
>
> On Sun, Jun 17, 2018 at 01:24:10PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
>>> How about a paragraph in the Debian Med policy? Maybe like
>>> "Many packages created for scientific purposes have executables with
>>> language-characteristic suffices like .pl or .py. This is not appropriate
>>> for public interfaces of a software that should be implementation-agnostic.
Hi, Andreas.
In principle, I agree, but it's difficult to write
"implementation-agnostic" software for M$ Windows, because the file
'extensions' are used by Windows to identify the file type and how to
launch it.
Infuriatingly, Windows conceals file extensions by default in its file
manager so users therefore see the program name without a ".py" suffix!
> [...] I do
> not think that beeing a scientist is an excuse to ignore good hints from
> IT experts. We can not do much about it but I would even consider it
> mean if we know good reasons for better names and hide this from
> upstream.
That's rather harsh and, remember, that being an IT expert is no excuse
to ignore the pragmatic solutions that scientists often have to adopt to
overcome the real constraints of working under a hostile IT policy that
mandates the use of Windows and dscourages or forbids the use of Linux.
It's important that we address cross-platform issues like .py endings
constructively. Simply stating that it is wrong isn't helpful. Neither
is implying that scientists are wilfully ignoring the advice of IT
'experts', some of who are actually telling them to use Windows...
As you know, I am a scientist :-)
Bye,
Tony.
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