On Jul 23, 2007, at 2:48 PM, Tres Seaver wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Noah Gift wrote: >>> >>> But by definition, the people typing the names of the >>> dependencies into >>> a 'setup.py' for such a plugin *are* Python programmers, and >>> could be >>> expected to know about case sensitivity. >>> >>> I don't think Jim was areguing that human-centric *search* should >>> punish >>> misspellings, but rather that encouraging such sloppiness in other >>> packages is a misfeature, especially if supporting it induces a >>> tax on >>> *all* users of automated dependency resolution. >>> >>> >> In my humble opinion, I for one completely agree with Phillip. I >> have had >> to sit down with quite a few new Python Programmers and show them >> how to use >> easy_install and I "thank God" easy_install is smart enough to >> figure out >> case sensitivity. This is a wonderful feature!!!! Please don't >> ever get >> rid of it :) >> Not being able to install a package as they couldn't figure out >> the exact >> name of the package could be the final straw for some new >> programmer to >> Python! > > There are two different use cases here: > > 1. User mis-types the name of a package on the command line, e.g.: > > $ easy_install Foo > > when it should be spelled: > > $ easy_install foo > > Being forgiving of case-mangling here ia a concern of the > easy_install *application*, and is non-controversil.
For me this is potentially controversial because: > 2. Programmer mis-types the name of a package in the dependencies > for his own pacakge, e.g.: > > setup(install_requires=['Foo']...) Note that this might be intentional, as opposed to a typo. The programmer will think "Foo" is a valid name because it worked with easy_install. It's true that easy_install prints a warning, but it is buried in so much output that it is easily missed or ignored. > In this case, coddling the error causes it to *propagate*, becuase > other programmers will copy it directly, or depend on the error- > filled package. Worse, the cost of error correction is > transferred > to *all* users of the setuptools library, even if they never use > 'easy_install' at all. Well said. 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
