On Mon, 2007-03-05 at 23:42 +0100, Piotr Ozarowski wrote:
> [Cliff Wells, 05.03.2007]
> > 
> > On Mon, 2007-03-05 at 22:29 +0100, Christoph Haas wrote:
> > 
> > > But installing anything using easy_install - and be it just 
> > > into /usr/local - is chaotic and hard to control. easy_install cannot 
> > > even 
> > > remove software properly. So I don't think I would want anything than a 
> > > binary deb package on my system. Just as a side note to Shannon Behrens 
> > > who said "We're on Ubuntu, and we just use eggs." If you really just 
> > > install eggs instead of proper binary packages then your Ubuntu package 
> > > management will get into trouble in no time. (For those not familiar with 
> > > it: Ubuntu is a sister project of Debian and uses the same package 
> > > format.)
> > 
> > Why is this so?
> 
> You can install your Pylons app. and forget about dependencies for next 2 
> years.
> Package maintainers will fix all bugs in related packages.

There is almost zero chance of that happening in the Python world, no
matter who's working on it.  In fact, if I install a Pylons app written
around Pylons 0.9.x, it's almost guaranteed that letting the system
package manager update Pylons will break that app at some point in the
not-so-distant future (in fact this exact issue around TurboGears was
the very reason I moved solely to easy_install).

This problem isn't Python-specific either.  You'll note that almost all
Ruby users use gem to install packages as well.  I've also found that
PHP does better when using PEAR for the most part.  

The single exception I've found where the system packaging tools do a
better job is when there are C extensions involved (and hence a reliance
on system libraries and a dependency tree that might fork outside the
realm of Python and easy_install).

> Sure, developers like ez_install. System administrators don't!

That's odd, because I do equal parts of both and greatly prefer
easy_install.  On my shared hosting boxes, I can use easy_install to
maintain specific versions of Python packages as required by specific
applications for specific users, something not easily doable (or doable
at all) using the system packaging tools.

Note that I'm not suggesting that for *some* people using the system
tools might not be preferable to easy_install nor that pursuing the
packaging of Python libraries and apps as debs/rpms/ebuilds or whatever
is a waste.  I am, however, contesting the blanket assertions that using
easy_install leads to chaos (it doesn't) or that system administrators
prefer the system tools over easy_install (this is pure speculation
based on the assumption that the sysadmin is clueless about
easy_install/gems/PEAR/cpan/et al).  

Regards,
Cliff



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