Python Packaging Strategy Discussion - Part 1

[dstufft (Donald Stufft)]

@sdispater

I would like first to ask a question: is it the role of the PyPA to endorse or promote a single tool? Is this even needed?

It’s one of the most common things that people ask for. Do we need it? I mean obviously the status quo works, but it solves a common problem people have with the tooling.

@sdispater

As far as I know, other languages do not have a packaging authority and it did not prevent their community to rally around a unified tool.

Rust has a packaging team, Go’s core team invented Go Mod, there’s probably other examples.

@sdispater

I am obviously biased but Poetry covers a lot of the needs most users might have and its popularity shows that. The fact that similar tools released after it did not gain as much traction is proof enough that the differences, even standards support, were not incentive enough to make the switch. This is especially true for Hatch which does not support lock files which is something users want and need, so switching to it would actually be a regression.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting preventing there to be options. The question is whether there should be a recommended or “default” option, not whether we should provide an only option. Obviously users want it, and they don’t feel well served by the status quo.