What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml? • Hacker News Board

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#151

Post by zo1 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

harikb wrote: post #22

fermienrico wrote: post #4

Python desperately needs a better packaging solution than pip from Python Software Foundation. Stop all new features until this - the biggest pain point for Python across all expertise levels from newbies to experienced Python programmers - is officially solved. No pipenv, no poetry, no conda, etc from third party devs who sometimes get tired of the pressure [1]. It is immense. Combine all this virtualenv stuff with…

I teach Python to some middle school kids. Pip vs Pip3 and PYTHONPATH wasted entirety of two class sessions. By the way, Python should go beyond Go. It should single binary the someone can install without root privileges. The fact that I have hundreds of Chromebooks at my school and I can’t use any of them - school IT, correctly, doesn’t want me mucking with advanced settings.

If you're working with new/inexperienced developers on disparate and various systems, please use a proper IDE like PyCharm that holds a developer's hand along the way. I'm not saying this because of preference (which I'll admit I have), but from a practical perspective. I've seen it first-hand countless times when someone new comes to Python. Especially "bootcamp" style developers that think they can do everything in VSCode. Don't mess around with custom, hand-rolled setups, you'll waste so much time as you've experienced.

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#152

Post by ahofmann » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #97

earthboundkid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an experienced Python programmer. I often have to collaborate with people who are not. There is no greater hell than talking them through installing a working Python environment. It’s impossible. Meanwhile, the pip project is full of developers who tell you that your problem is not a problem and you’re discouraging people by pointing out that they’re blame shifting: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/4995 I hone…

> There is no greater hell than talking them through installing a working Python environment. It’s impossible. I give a lot of Python professional trainings, and I get to do that regularly, in very diverse situations. It's indeed full of gotchas. Since it's not going to be solved quickly, meanwhile, here is what works if you need to help people setuping python: 1 - Install Python correctly The first version Python do…

Wow, I am not a python developer and avoid python as much as I can because I hear about problems with versions everywhere. I have no idea which documentation is correct and which is old/wrong. With your manual I might dare to try python. Anyone who says (as seen in this thread) that python is not that complicated to install and use should take a look at this monster of instructions and then shut up.

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#153

Post by steveklabnik » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #148

Waterluvian wrote: post #26

Is toml even supported in the standard library? This seems just bizarre. Python's really overtaking node for massive churn. I feel like an old guy when peers say, "don't use virtual environment use pipenv." then someone says no no don't even use that, use poetry. Etc. I think about 50% of why I enjoy, in my soul, about Rust when I'm hacking away and personal goofs is that the dependency and project management system…

Rust management system is first class because the language has been designed from scratch 10 years ago. Python has been around since 1991. It came out before installing dependencies from internet was a thing. It had support for Windows XP, Atari, Solaris. You gotta be able to pip install stuff that are written in C (numpy) or in Fortran (scipy). It had been implemented in the JVM, .net, and Python itself using pypy.…

While you're not wrong that it's much easier to build systems with the advent of foresight, Rust also supported Windows XP, Solaris, stuff in C or Fortran. That's not the issue.

It's really purely the "designed from scratch 10 years ago" (though, only six years for Cargo).

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#154

Post by earthboundkid » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #56

earthboundkid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Python’s packaging is partly bad because it’s based on C extensions, which are intrinsically bad, but it’s also just plain bad compared to its peers, like Ruby and NPM.

What exactly is "intrinsically bad" about extensions written in C?

C/C++ have no equivalent of npm/bundler/pip. Instead there are incompatible flavors of Makefiles for incompatible C compilers. It's a hard problem space to work in.

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#155

Post by earthboundkid » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #97

earthboundkid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an experienced Python programmer. I often have to collaborate with people who are not. There is no greater hell than talking them through installing a working Python environment. It’s impossible. Meanwhile, the pip project is full of developers who tell you that your problem is not a problem and you’re discouraging people by pointing out that they’re blame shifting: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/4995 I hone…

> There is no greater hell than talking them through installing a working Python environment. It’s impossible. I give a lot of Python professional trainings, and I get to do that regularly, in very diverse situations. It's indeed full of gotchas. Since it's not going to be solved quickly, meanwhile, here is what works if you need to help people setuping python: 1 - Install Python correctly The first version Python do…

Your comment was too long for me to read without my eyes glazing over. Maybe it's because I already know this stuff, but I suspect for someone who doesn't know it and just wants to program, it would be intimidating.

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#156

Post by earthboundkid » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

j0057 wrote: post #138

twic wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a weird, surprising, unhelpful design, and a lot of critical comments being deleted.

Weird, surprising and unhelpful are value judgements on your part. It could be a security feature to someone else! The hidden (not deleted) comments are hidden not because they contain criticism, but because of an unnecessarily harsh tone, which is unhelpful to anyone wanting to read up on the discussion at hand, and definitely not helpful for the motivation of anybody currently doing the unthankful work of maintaini…

> The hidden (not deleted) comments are hidden not because they contain criticism, but because of an unnecessarily harsh tone, which is unhelpful to anyone wanting to read up on the discussion at hand, and definitely not helpful for the motivation of anybody currently doing the unthankful work of maintaining pip.

I reread the thread last night and asked, Was I too harsh? Am I discouraging the thankless pip team? Obviously, I am biased towards myself, but no, I don't think I am the one doing the discouraging. They are the ones doing the discouraging.

Go back through the comments and look at who is PyPA official and who's not: the non-members have ideas and members shoot them down. It's not that complicated technically--there should be a switch called "require hashes" instead of an implicit requirement for hashes once you use one. But the PyPA devs just showed zero interest in understanding the problem or helping. Their first comment was that error message was fine, nothing to fix!!!

I ask myself, would I want to contribute a patch to pip? I contribute patches occasionally to OSS. Not every day, but every couple of months when something comes up that affects me. I would never bother. Why? It's obvious from their tone that the patch would be stuck in a queue and never reviewed. (This happened to a coworker at a former job. We maintained a patched version of pip for years because they wouldn't take our change.)

In contrast, I just submitted a broken patch to Go (I broke tests and said so in my patch) and the Go team took it and fixed the tests. Why did I bother to submit a broken patch to Go? Because it was pretty clear from the tone of the discussion that if I got the ball rolling, they would push it the rest of the way over the hill and I want the issue fixed in the next version of Go, so I submitted what I had even without going through and fixing all the tests (which I didn't have the expertise to do).

Now, this is not the same. Go is supported by Google and has money and developers, yada yada. But the Python Foundation is an organization. It has a payroll. It has official members. They could ask the EU for €5m grant to work with N devs for Y years fixing Python packaging… Whatever. I'm not in charge of PyPA, so it's not my problem.

But I do object to the gaslighting in implying that we, the users, are discouraging the poor, unthanked PyPA devs. No, they don't want to be helped, so they put out the vibe to make it clear we should leave them alone.

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#157

Post by BiteCode_dev » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #155

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no greater hell than talking them through installing a working Python environment. It’s impossible. I give a lot of Python professional trainings, and I get to do that regularly, in very diverse situations. It's indeed full of gotchas. Since it's not going to be solved quickly, meanwhile, here is what works if you need to help people setuping python: 1 - Install Python correctly The first version Python do…

Your comment was too long for me to read without my eyes glazing over. Maybe it's because I already know this stuff, but I suspect for someone who doesn't know it and just wants to program, it would be intimidating.

This is not the instructions to install Python.

Those are the instructions to teach anybody in any OS with any configuration to install python and deal with 3rd party dependencies.

E.G: if you are a Windows 10 user, instructions are 2 lines:

- install from the store

- run "py -X.Z" to start python

That's it.

The difficulty is to have general instructions for all cases, including packaging. Which is a problem with every scripting languages.

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#158

Post by BiteCode_dev » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

ahofmann wrote: post #152

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no greater hell than talking them through installing a working Python environment. It’s impossible. I give a lot of Python professional trainings, and I get to do that regularly, in very diverse situations. It's indeed full of gotchas. Since it's not going to be solved quickly, meanwhile, here is what works if you need to help people setuping python: 1 - Install Python correctly The first version Python do…

Wow, I am not a python developer and avoid python as much as I can because I hear about problems with versions everywhere. I have no idea which documentation is correct and which is old/wrong. With your manual I might dare to try python. Anyone who says (as seen in this thread) that python is not that complicated to install and use should take a look at this monster of instructions and then shut up.

>that python is not that complicated to install

This is not the instructions to install Python.

Those are the instructions to teach anybody in any OS with any configuration to install python and deal with 3rd party dependencies.

E.G: if you are a Windows 10 user, instructions to install python are 2 lines:

- install from the store

- run "py -X.Z" to start python

The complication comes when you have people with Windows, and Mac, and Linux, and they already have some Python installed in various ways, and then want to install stuff with pip, etc.

Which is true for Ruby, JS, PHP, etc.

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#159

Post by lapnitnelav » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #110

mixmastamyk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are great when you need big or fast, but py is much better at the smaller, easier to write end.

Ah, so Python is for small and slow, doesn't seem to be the best in everything after all. Which brings us back to "nice scripting and introduction to programming language".

When the overwhelming majority of computer users will probably struggle with something a bit more complex than a Hello World type project, nice scripting and introduction to programming is light-years ahead of every body else.

This is no small feat.

Also the ecosystem of libraries is the same.

You can't see that from your ivory tower but those things matter a lot to people on the ground.

Don't let you prejudice get in the way, it never helps :)

Re: What the Heck Is Pyproject.toml?

#160

Post by sauldcosta » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

harikb wrote: post #22

fermienrico wrote: post #4

Python desperately needs a better packaging solution than pip from Python Software Foundation. Stop all new features until this - the biggest pain point for Python across all expertise levels from newbies to experienced Python programmers - is officially solved. No pipenv, no poetry, no conda, etc from third party devs who sometimes get tired of the pressure [1]. It is immense. Combine all this virtualenv stuff with…

I teach Python to some middle school kids. Pip vs Pip3 and PYTHONPATH wasted entirety of two class sessions. By the way, Python should go beyond Go. It should single binary the someone can install without root privileges. The fact that I have hundreds of Chromebooks at my school and I can’t use any of them - school IT, correctly, doesn’t want me mucking with advanced settings.

You and your students can get access to a few online coding tools designed to help with this via the GitHub Student Developer Pack and the GitHub Teacher Toolbox (https://education.github.com), all for free.

Our online coding tool (and entire course library) is included in the Pack. https://next.tech/github-students and https://next.tech/github-teachers if you'd like to take a look.