Proposal: new section for package announcement

I propose to create a specific session like Ideas, but for all new packages published to pypi, conda or another third party source, like announcements of Rust forum: https://users.rust-lang.org/c/announcements/

I passed very much time on internet to search a packages to not reinventing the wheel and then found after hours.

In Rust forum that’s easy, thanks to announcements section.

:upside_down_face:

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I’m a little confused—could you explain more how this would make it easier to find packages vs. just searching PyPI, GitHub, other existing forums, or everything at once with Google? Seems like those would be much more convenient, direct and comprehensive options vs. going to a forum/Discourse and searching there for the small fraction of package authors who would cross-post their release announcements here. Furthermore, to me it seems likely to easily get overrun with spam and novelty/vanity packages if it does pick up traction. But maybe there’s something I’m missing here?

PyPI has an RSS feed exactly for newly published packages:

https://pypi.org/rss/packages.xml

See Feeds - Warehouse documentation for more details

3 Likes

Thanks for this suggestion! I missing it!
But at this point I would receive all the packages published by mail…it seems a bit too much.

Let me explain my request:

When I search on google a python package (but it also happens for other languages, like Go and Rust, which are the last languages ​​I’m using besides Python :-)), I’m presented with a page that Google thinks is better for my search . I’ll give a practical example.

One of the latest projects I’ve been working on, has a graphql backend.
If I search “python graphql” on Google, various search items appear, but one of the first is the official GraphQL site, where I immediately notice the bindings for my language:


Perfect! They are sorted by number of stars on Github. Now I do a comparison on Pypi and notice a package level discrepancy.

I don’t know what to choose because I don’t have any user experience with these libraries and above all I don’t have satisfactory documentation in some packages to avoid running into semantic programming bugs.

I decide to change language. I do a quick search on the official Go forum. I find the most used package with links to documentation and user experiences.

I do the same thing for Rust. I find the same things here too.

Here, it would be nice if everyone, as also happens in the other forums, could publish their work and the users of a specific forum of the language like this, could tell their experience with that package, extend the official documentation, publish their projects or examples based on such packages.
At that point, you have only one research point and you would find the right package for you, in a few minutes of research.

@CAM-Gerlach, for my graphql project I spent a week googling and pypi researching, spending hours installing, understanding, studying and implementing packages. Also, in python no nosql database packages have the same interface. Everyone does what they like, something that doesn’t happen in other languages…but that’s another thing and I’ve already opened a discussion on this forum.
If you had an announcements session, you would have a single point of to find with feedback from people who can tell you about their experience.
Open source is also based on this, if we consider source == ideas.

I hope I explained myself better.
Anyway, thanks for your feedback!

Thanks for sharing the detailed info. I think it sounds a bit like yelp reviews/discussions but for Python packages on PyPI :slight_smile:

I can definitely see how such a forum could be useful and make it easier for the users to find and choose packages, but only if used properly :slight_smile:

We already have a central place of discovery of packages (i.e. the PyPI RSS).
The discussions and feedback about each package are probably already happening on each of the project’s GitHub repo, issue tracker, and GitHub Discussions, just not on a central place.

While such a central place could be useful, it will also adds burden to the forum moderators, so I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort.

3 Likes

I search for Python packages by going to pypi.org: https://pypi.org/
and entering keywords in the search field, eg “graphql”.
The results for that are here: Search results · PyPI

In fact I do this often enough that in my browser (firefox) I’ve made a
“pypi” keyword search, and can just type pypi graphql in the
location/url bar to perform that search.

My point here is that using a general purpose search engine like Google
to find language specific packages when that language already has a
central place indexing packages is less effective than using the search
at the central place (pypi.org in this case).

Playing “guess the useful package keyword” with a general purpose search
engine such as Google or DuckDuckGo is tedious and frustrating.

My personal opinion is that having a forum category for “new package
posted” may be nice for people who want it, but not generally useful.
There are currently 417,534 packages on PyPI, with 3,965,298 releases.
That’s a lot to keep abreast of in a forum.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au

1 Like

You don’t seem to be aware of the comp.lang.python.announce newsgroup or corresponding mailing list python-announce-list@python.org:

This is meant for Python related announcements and often used for package announcements.

Note that this is different from an RSS feed on PyPI, since it only gets announcements for which the author wrote an announcement email.

Some additional leads:

  • Libraries.io provides more insight into popularity of a package based on various statistics
  • Download numbers are available on e.g. PePy or using
  • StackOverflow will typically have some suggestions and allows you to get a quick overview of any issues a package may have
  • The web is full of blog entries with reviews or suggestions for Python packages
  • Python conferences and their talk archives/videos are a great way to learn about new technology
1 Like

I don’t think I explained myself well, given the turn the discussion has taken.
I know how and where to look for a Python package. I also know how to narrow down my search to choose one over another.
What I meant is that an author of a certain package, by publishing it in a dedicated section of the language forum, can also start a discussion on how to use it, advice, information from users who have already used it.

As I said before, to choose a package, you have to install it (one by one), test it with your code, test it with your environment, study its known bugs and then evaluate it with others.

With a dedicated section, this process would be streamlined since it is possible, as happens in the Rust and Go forums, for users to write their own experience, recommending one rather than the other, indicating what changes.

Anyway, I accept all the advice you have given me and also in fact, the will of the community and the majority, but I still think that to choose a python package over pypi on the same topic is slower than searching for a Rust package.

PS: In Rust the search point for a package is https://crates.io/. Here everyone can publish any package, like pypi. Not all those who publish packages announce their package in the forum, but those who do it is to explain their reasons and to receive feedback in a constructive and controlled way, thanks to the forum moderators.

FWIW this is what I thought you meant, and as a core maintainer of a reasonably popular package, I would definitely post hand-written announcements to publicize large/more interesting releases here if there was a dedicated topic for that sort of thing.

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I also understood the proposal like this. I’m just not convinced that just creating such a forum would be effective by itself. To get critical mass for such a forum would need someone to encourage key projects to get involved. Otherwise there’s a risk that it will become a home for “smaller” projects that don’t already have their own communities, or which aren’t the “well known” solutions.

Such a list might also need some level of ongoing curation - I can imagine lots of announcements for (to pick a random example) frequently updated packages in a popular area like data science. Smaller interest groups could easily get lost in such volume. Basically, what I’m saying here is that something that works for Rust might not scale to the sort of volumes we have for Python packages.

So I guess I’m generally OK with the idea, but I think it needs more day to day management than the OP imagines, and it’s not obvious to me where such management would come from.

2 Likes

I also understood the proposal like this. I’m just not convinced that
just creating such a forum would be effective by itself.
To get critical mass for such a forum would need someone to encourage
key projects to get involved.

Well, to be fair, not creating a forum for announcements will
definitely prevent it reaching critical mass.

Otherwise there’s a risk that it will become a home for “smaller”
projects that don’t already have their own communities, or which
aren’t the “well known” solutions.

There is the python-announce-list@python.org mailing list - several
packages routinely announce releases there. Being for announcements
(i.e. low noise) discussions is almost zero. And I suspect most uses of
that list would like it like that.

A forum would, presumably, be more discussion tolerant and I gather
that’s Matteo’s objective.

I’ve no objection to such a forum myself.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au

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