Python packaging: Why we can't have nice things, Part 1
This post is a start of a series I’ve planned about how packaging currently works in Python, what’s wrong with it, and how to cope with the problems. But before I get into the meat of it, I want to talk about common complaints that don’t resonate with me.
It’s no secret that lots of people are unhappy with the system and have been for a long time. It’s practically a meme. And to be clear, things really aren’t as good as they ought to be. There are plenty of problems that can be fixed, should be fixed, don’t happen for other programming languages and have existed for an embarrassingly long time. And there are plenty of discussions about how to fix things properly that drag on forever, sometimes ultimately leading to a dead end. (More about the ways that discussing change proposals fails, in a later post.)
I’ve gathered a handful of these points below, recasting them as some well known pop rock lyrics. Feel free to sing or hum along if you know the tune.
