My thoughts on the Packaging PEP process

[BrenBarn (Brendan Barnwell)]

@davidism

Hey all, I was hoping that slow mode would cause you to reflect on what is on topic here more instead of falling into off topic discussion, but despite that you’re still getting off topic. This is not the place to discuss the PEP process, or what other installers exist or do, or respond to posts that are not about (or directly ignore) what’s stated by the PEP. Provide feedback about this PEP here, not about other things that could be PEPs or meta discussions instead.

Needless to say this only amplifies my concerns tenfold.

Since even the on-topic parts of my previous comment have now been hidden away in a post in a different subcategory on this forum, let me restate those here:

1. There is no urgent need to make any decision on this PEP. Simply implementing some behavior in pipx and/or pip-run will give users most of whatever benefit there may be. If we later decide some other behavior is better, then we can standardize that, and pipx and pip-run and other tools can then change their behavior to align with what later becomes the standard.
2. There is still deep disagreement about whether the PEP makes the right decision on several matters. It is better to wait and give ourselves more time to think through those issues.
3. The PEP connects to several other issues (such as “pyproject.toml for non-wheels”), and those issues should be thought about together, and no proposal on any of them should reach the PEP stage which is not part of a coherent solution to all of them.

At the risk of having this post again moved off, let me briefly say that shoving posts under the rug by moving them off thread has severely damaged my trust in the process of evaluating this PEP (never mind any other PEPs, so see, this is still on-topic). It is more important to make the right decision for Python packaging than to “stay on topic”. If we are straying off topic because this PEP connects to other related matters, that is a sign that there is still more discussion to be had, and thus it is too early to make a decision on this PEP.^[1] If such issues exist in the PEP resolution process overall, then as far as I’m concerned it would be better to call a complete halt to all PEP decision-making than to simply press ahead and muzzle criticism. The vast majority of PEPs (including this one, so see, this is still on-topic) simply are not urgent and in most cases (including this one, so see, this is still on-topic) it is better to take longer to reach a better decision than to make a quick decision.

---

1. If I were the only one straying off topic that could mean I’m just a raving crank, but I don’t think that’s the case here. ↩︎