At 04:13 PM 7/2/2010 +0200, Tarek Ziadé wrote:
On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 4:00 PM, P.J. Eby <p...@telecommunity.com> wrote:
[..]
> Isn't it interesting how these rules prohibit open disagreement
or criticism
> (or even discussion!) of distribute and related matters, but *not*
> setuptools?
There's a huge gap between criticism + discussion, and the habitual flame
of distribute vs setuptools. I think you know what I mean.
Since, as far as I can tell, David's are the first negative comments
I've seen regarding distribute, the only "habitual" flame I'm aware
of would be people spreading falsehoods about setuptools.
I personally don't consider mere criticism of setuptools' or
distribute's code or policies to be flaming.
> On a separate note, I'm curious why discussion of Distutils2 development is
> not in a formal Python SIG, such as the Distutils-SIG.
To avoid such threads and flames.
Vigorous discussion is a normal part of life in a Python SIG, or any
standards-development process. Lots of people have said plenty of
mean and nasty things about setuptools here (and to a lesser extent,
people said them about WSGI when I started that effort), but I have
never called for them to be silenced.
The only thing I object to is people making statements that they know
(or should know) are false, or to people speaking with flagrant
disregard for the truth in an apparent effort to score political points.
There is *huge* difference to me between, "Hey PJ, I hate setuptools
and it sucks!" and "Nobody should use setuptools because it is unmaintained."
Regarding the first one, I say, "Sorry to hear that, good luck to you
with your future endeavors." The second one, however, is FUD and an
unnecessary smear tactic.
And I find it strange that many distribute supporters seem to prefer
this approach over highlighting distribute's *actual* distinctions
from setuptools, such as (not a complete list):
* It has more tests
* It runs on Python 3
* It supports 2.6+ "user" directories
* It is released more frequently
* We review patches more quickly
* It's available in Mercurial, so you can more easily track local
changes and participate in development
(And even *I* agree that these are all benefits for many people.)
However, perhaps it's a reflection of the fact that these benefits
are NOT universally salient -- for many people, not one of these
improvements is important enough to merit switching. So, if someone
has other reasons than *user benefit* for wanting everyone else to
switch, then perhaps they are forced to resort to FUD to motivate
people to switch.
And THAT is what I find distasteful. If you want people to switch
because it is *actually* better for them, then more power to
you. However, trying to persuade people to switch for *political*
reasons -- reasons that will not provide any actual *benefit* to the
switchers -- that's just disgusting.
If people want to get creative in their presentations of the truth,
please stick to exaggerating the advantages of distribute, rather
than exaggerating the disadvantages of setuptools. The former is to
be expected, the latter is unnecessary nastiness... especially since
I bend over backwards *not* to say bad things about distribute, even
when I'm more or less forced to comment on technical differences
between the two.
Indeed, I take especial care to treat them as mere stylistic
differences, even when I think that distribute's choices will
actually lead to problems for a given user's use case, simply because
I don't want to deal with the flaming that ensues any time I say
something that can remotely be construed as a criticism of
distribute. (Consider the brouhaha that erupted the time I simply
stated that if people wanted to upgrade to the latest setuptools,
they would need to uninstall distribute first -- which is a mere
technical fact caused by the way distribute operates!)
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