[Product-Developers] pypi vs plone.org releases

[Alex Clark]

Hello here too :-)

On 10/12/11 11:31 PM, Jon Stahl wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Alex Clark<aclark at aclark.net>  wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 10/11/11 12:59 AM, Dylan Jay wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> There was a previous thread where this was brought up but nothing
>>> resolved.
>>> Plugins these days tend to get released on plone.org OR pypi but not
>>> always both.
>>> This is confusing for inexperienced intergrators or end customers.
>>> For instance looking at plone.org you'd think Products.PloneGlossary is
>>> unmaintained
>>>
>>> http://plone.org/products/ploneglossary
>>>
>>> but if you look at pypi you realise it is maintained.
>>>
>>> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Products.PloneGlossary/1.5.0b3#b3-2011-07-15
>>>
>>> There were some clever suggestions about how to fix this but none seems
>>> particularly easy.
>>> For instance make PSC mirror all the releases for software it manages
>>> from pypi.
>>>
>>> Anyone got a bright idea on how to fix this?
>>
>>
>> Easy fixes
>> ==========
>>
>> The easiest fix would be to disable/abandon plone.org/products, but I don't
>> think anyone wants to do that yet (including me).
>>
>> The next easiest "fix" (which isn't really a fix) is to promote
>> dual-releases via mkrelease, releaser, etc.
>>
>> Hard fixes
>> ==========
>>
>> As you mention, we could build some clever system to list PyPI entries on
>> plone.org. But I think the new http://opencomparison.org/ stuff tackles some
>> of this and I don't want to duplicate that effort.
>>
>> But the hardest fix involves just being able to do *anything* on plone.org
>> right now. There are many ideas/tasks floating around; and I know the board
>> is actively seeking resolution(s); I hope some of these will materialize
>> between now and the end of the year:
>>
>> * Upgrade plone.org to 4.2.x
>>   * Create a plonetheme.ploneorg package to hold the "new" theme, and factor
>> it out of Products.PloneOrg
>>   * Make releases for all dependencies and update the buildout, most of this
>> has been done and is reflected in
>> https://github.com/plone/Products.PloneOrg/tree/4.1-compat
>
>
> I think Alex pretty much hits the nail on the head here.  In the short
> term, as I see it, the only sensible solution is to actively promote
> dual-releasing.  It is really really easy, I just think awareness is
> not as high as it needs to be.  That is probably best changed by
> one-on-one contact with product authors (and maybe a simple FAQ that
> Alex (?) could write up on how to do it, so that anybody can easily
> nag someone about this.)   We can't force people to do it, but we sure
> as heck can make it clear what "community best practice" is.


True. I think community best practice is currently dual release until 
such time as we conquer the next milestone, whatever that may be. Point 
of fact, I doubt anyone actually uses the releases we host via the 
plone.org PSC. By default, PyPI is used. You have to go out of your way 
to specify you want to download a package from dist.plone.org and I 
suspect almost no one does this.


So, dual release accomplishes two important things:

- package upload to PyPI (where people's buildouts can download it)

- content upload to PSC (where people browsing our site can find out 
about it)

The fact the packages are hosted on dist.plone.org in addition to PyPI 
is almost irrelevant (as far as the status quo is concerned at least; we 
could change this by promoting our dist.plone.org index, but I'm not 
sure that makes any sense.)





Alex











>
> In the longer term, I do think we want to seriously consider shifting
> Plone.org to be more of a selective Pypi scraper.  We'd have to think
> about how to best include the ultra-important Plone version
> compatibility metadata, but I assume that with so many smart folks
> running around, that is solveable.
>
> $0.02,
> jon