On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 11:40:48AM -0700, Thomas Kluyver wrote:
> This condescending attitude towards developers ('another toy rewrite') doesn't
I am a Python developer. Full time. For work. That uses pypi for almost
everything.
This happens a lot.
Don't take this as me trashing on Python or Pythonistas. If you want to talk
about this in person, I'm usually at PyCon. I'm also usually in the packaging
BOF. Perhaps we can bring some of this up there this year?
> help. Work with upstream developers to understand what they're doing, encourage
> them to care about API stability and to use conventions like semantic
> versioning and deprecation warnings to reduce the impact of changes. There are
> plenty of developers who do care about backwards compatibility.
And just as many (if not more) that don't. As a result, we have to
design the system to defend against this breakage.
> We could also have topic-specific extra repos, so that a user can add, say, a
> Python-science repo to get newer versions of some packages by accepting a bit
> of extra risk associated with that. Neurodebian offers something like that, but
> in general it's hard to set up. Ubuntu PPAs are much easier to get set up, but
> don't build for Debian relases.
PPAMAIN would be nice for special cases like this, aye!
> - This gives module authors little to no incentive to get involved in Debian
> packaging.
That's fine. I don't think we need to give them incentive. If they want
to help with Debian packaging, I'd rather they focus on providing the
user with something rather then introduce another python module without a
consumer.
> - In scientific Python, the expectation is that *users* will import and use
> modules directly.
I think such things are better suited to pip and virtualenvs.
> Likewise, most code that depends on a package like Django is
> not going to be packaged as a Debian app.
There are quite a few consumers of Django that are packaged. Developers
should be using latest Django so that they can target the version of
Django that we'll have in Debian by the time they release too.
> I don't think Debian has some special
> insight into what currently unpackaged things users want.
>
>
> We care more about users than developers. Python developers can use
> virtualenv and pip on Debian like any other Python development env.
>
>
> Believe it or not, developers care about users as well. That's why we're
> writing code and fixing bugs. We want the people using our software to have the
> best possible experience. However, we regularly see bug reports for problems
> where we have already released a fix, because users are on outdated versions.
> So, upstream projects are increasingly inclined to bypass distros and offer
> their software to users by a more direct route.
>
> Again, it feels like packagers see developers as the enemy.
Le sigh.
I *am* an active Developer. My day job is hacking, not packaging. I do
this shit for fun, and because it helps people.
> Yes, developers
> will at times do things that you disagree with, but fundamentally we are on the
> same team. We both want to deliver great software to users. If you fight
> developers, you will lose, by sheer weight of numbers.
>
> Thomas
I have most of this in an unposted blog post. Perhaps I'll finish it and
send you there after I'm done.
Cheers,
T
--
.''`. Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org>
: :' : Proud Debian Developer
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`- http://people.debian.org/~paultag
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