[announce] Pybi and Posy

[dstufft (Donald Stufft)]

@h-vetinari

Au contraire, having an installer that’s not dependent on the underlying python, which can thus change that python install independently, solves a large class of problems that were so far unsolvable. I remember halfway-serious jokes about rewriting pip in rust popping up regularly over the last few years (and that from people deeply involved in Python packaging), for very similar reasons.

While the approach doesn’t crucially depend on Rust, it does makes a lot of sense for speed, stability, depth of ecosystem, etc, and well, the results kinda speak for themselves:

Sorry, but that’s not true.

The only property of Rust that is being used here is that it’s possible to run a rust binary on a computer that doesn’t already have Python installed on it. Which of course isn’t a property of Rust but compiled languages in general.

However, claiming that these problems are unsolvable doesn’t mesh with the reality today. For instance, posy could have just as easily been written in Python, and used one of the various strategies that exist to create a single file executable out of Python. Something like pyoxidizer, which even uses Rust itself to bootstrap the Python interpreter.

@h-vetinari

So while there’s a lot to unpack here (and many aspects that deserve in-depth discussion), the language choice being a serious shortcoming is just like… your opinion, man.

The language choice is a short coming, because it has the implication that the packaging tool isn’t capable enough to produce real world software that is meant to be deployed to end user machines, machines that you can’t rely on the system Python on. After all, there’s nothing inherently special about posy here, it’s just an application that wants to run without the dependence of an existing Python install.