What's the best way to help with packaging.python.org?

brettcannon · June 22, 2021, 7:59pm

Is it PR review? Issue triage?

bhrutledge · June 25, 2021, 11:12am

I’d also be happy to help with triage and review, given my recent work:

https://github.com/pypa/packaging.python.org/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Abhrutledge

webknjaz · June 25, 2021, 11:52am

Both. Reviews help unblock merges and activity in issues helps close them faster and collect more points of view.

I think @dustin and @pradyunsg could give you a commit bit if that’s what you’re asking for. Also, there’s a Gardeners team in the PyPA org that gives people some privileges to do things across all repos (mostly relabel things). @dustin should be able to invite you there as well.

dustin · June 25, 2021, 2:52pm

@bhrutledge Added you to the ‘Gardeners’ team, so you can triage issues across the entire PyPA org, including pypa/packaging.python.org. Let me know if there’s any projects that you don’t have access to, as the team needs to be added to each individual one.

dustin · June 25, 2021, 2:58pm

To answer the original question: I think what the guide needs is some more ‘best practices’ guidance and some new long-form content/guides. One example I’d like to see included there is “dependency pinning / hashing / compiling workflows”, but there are others as well.

The issue tracker is also fairly well maintained (thanks @webknjaz and others!) so at a quick glance, it looks like everything with the help wanted label is pick-up-able: Issues · pypa/packaging.python.org · GitHub

pradyunsg · June 25, 2021, 5:26pm

I, personally, think there’s roughly 3 things that the guide would benefit from:

a review of existing content to identify what the gaps are, what updates are needed, which (IMO) will likely lead to some amount of restructuring of the content on the site (reviving [WIP] Edit User Guide to offer more information about usability and use cases by willingc · Pull Request #627 · pypa/packaging.python.org · GitHub has been on my TODO list for many months).
more content, elaborating on specific workflows and usecases. There was some feedback on this in the pip UX work, but I’ll need to poke folks to figure out what exactly it was.
a facelift, to look like it is a “modern” website in 2021.

There’s also a case to be made that it’s not clear “who makes the final calls here”, since the folks I understood as the primary maintainers (Thea and Nick) aren’t that active anymore. Idk if they “passed the baton” to somebody, but clarity here would help a lot as well (especially if someone tackles contentious issues in this area).

There’s also at least 2 things that I’ve personally dropped the ball on, that I’m happy for someone else to pick up:

Adding src/ vs flat discussion page, and adding a recommendation for using the src/ layout in projects.
Clarifying the recommendation situation on pipenv, and getting concensus/decision on what to do here.

On a related note, the stuff that I’m personally chipping away at right now, is to give this site a design update. I’m also sort-of hoping that other PyPA projects would end up adopting the same theme so that it’s cohesive overall. And maybe this could also align with the work that the folks on docs.python.org are doing? IDK what’s gonna happen in this whole space TBH, but it’s basically the stuff I’m doing right now; and everything in this paragraph depends on how long I’m motivated to chip away at this and if I’m able to convince others that it’s actually a good idea.

henryiii · June 27, 2021, 4:26am

Just to give a little context, this came up in from a discussion about binary packing and documentation covering it (which is many years out of date); as a result of that, I made several PRs to packaging.python.org about four weeks ago which haven’t been reviewed yet. I don’t want to work on followup PRs until those are in, etc. I think there’s a small set of people helping with packaging.python.org, and the intersection between them and interest in binary packing is even smaller.

I’d be happy to help, as well, but I can’t help review my own PRs.

@bhrutledge You’ve beat me by 2 PRs. Pull requests · pypa/packaging.python.org · GitHub

webknjaz · June 27, 2021, 8:34pm

@dustin @pradyunsg I think Brian deserves to co-maintain this project: Promoting Brian Rutledge as maintainer of the PUG · Issue #926 · pypa/packaging.python.org · GitHub.

Good point. This is the reason I mostly merge non-controversial changes and those with a sufficient amount of discussion and points expressed by different people. Plus sometimes I attempt tracking down folks who have expertise in certain topics to tag them.

FYI I often don’t have time or a strong enough understanding to merge things so I try to involve more folks in the discussions. But if there are some approvals/comments from the community (non-PyPA) that looks credible, this also helps me to approve some PRs. So I’d suggest trying to point more folks at those contributions — this should result in faster merges (most of the time, except for when I don’t feel confident approving on my own).

bhrutledge · June 27, 2021, 9:46pm

Thanks @webknjaz. To be clear, I consider myself to be an “advanced novice” in the packaging ecosystem, but this feels like a worthwhile learning opportunity. I also genuinely enjoy code review and wordsmithing (and bikeshedding ). I’d probably be in a similar position as you re: what I feel comfortable merging.

pradyunsg · July 8, 2021, 7:32pm

I’ve actually gone ahead and added @bhrutledge to the packaging editors team, since no one has voiced any concerns against doing that so far, at least 3 folks have said +1s (and I’m an additional +1 as well) and Brian has been pretty active around the guide as well.