Matt Good wrote: > Oops, I forgot to copy the list on my first respose. > > On Sun, 2006-10-22 at 14:45 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote: >> Matt Good wrote: >>> On Sun, 2006-10-22 at 13:52 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote: >>>> I'd like to call "Ya aint gonna need it" on the extras feature of >>>> setuptools. >>>> >>>> As far as I can tell, extras are just a way to avoid fine-grained packages. >>>> Is this benefit worth the complexity? I don't think so. It violates >>>> "There's Only One Way To Do It" and increases the complexity of setuptools. >>>> >>>> Setuptools is wonderful but it is complex. I think it would be helpful to >>>> make it simpler and I really don't see a need for extras. >>> Well, I've found them to be useful with entry points in Trac plugins. >>> For example the SpamFilter plugin provides several spam filtering >>> methods, not all of which will be needed by every user. There's an IP >>> blacklist filter that requires DNSPython. By declaring the entry point >>> for the blacklist module with an extra for DNSPython the module will >>> only load if that requirement is available. >> Why not just distribute the IP blacklist filter as a separate package? >> >>> I don't think it's uncommon for packages to have optional features that >>> require additional dependencies, and extras provide an easy way to >>> declare those dependencies. Sure, sometimes these features could be >>> broken out into a separate package, but in the cases where I've used >>> extras making additional packages would be the more complex solution. >> How more complex? You would simply have had more packages? Is that >> really more complex that extras? > > Yes. An extra is simply a line or two in setup.py. A separate package > means another branch in SVN,
Not necessarily. You could manage multiple related packages as a single SVN project. I do. > more releases to make, upload to the > Cheeseshop, True. > more files for users to download, If the downloads are automated, does this make a difference? > and unneeded duplication > between the original and new package. Why duplication? Likely, one of the packages would simply depend on the other. > This seems like an awful lot of > additional work just to justify removing a feature from setuptools. I think the extra work is just making the extra releases, at least assuming automated downloads. >> Is it advantagous enough to violate TWOOWTDI? > > How does it violate that? There's *always* more than one way, but there > should be one clear "right way", and I think extras *is* that way. There don't have to be multiple ways. I also don't see extras as being clearly superior, but we disagree. Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
