ianb/pywebapp — Issue #3: Define a Scope
Author: kennethreitz
Created: 2012-02-11 00:46:28+00:00
State: open

Is it within scope to provide a way to define system-level dependencies?

There's currently some tention between System Packaging and Python Packaging. People often become bound and limited by their system and the packages. Startups will run Python 2.6 when they could easily be on 2.7 because it's "what was installed" on the Ubuntu AMI they downloaded. They'll run whatever version of lxml is in the aptitude repository. It enables bad packaging and non-portable deployments.

I feel that the best way moving forward is for people to decouple from their systems a bit more. It shouldn't matter what version of Python is installed at a system-level. Virtualenv solved that a long time ago.

So, is providing a mechanism to specify system packages a good idea? Will it make the problem worse?

Maybe it would only be a documentation problem. We could clearly state "You should never use these sections for Python dependencies. Ever."

If you're just treating the deb/rpm lists of dependencies as metadata, however, I can see some usefulness.

Thoughts?