On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 2:02 PM Yujiri <yujiri@disroot.org> wrote:
> Drew has another article where he argues that packaging for distributions is not the responsibility of the application developer, in fact it was the one linked as "Further reading" on the recent Python rant: https://drewdevault.com/2021/09/27/Let-distros-do-their-job.html
>
> What do you think of this point?

It's a good point. But that also means there must be non-distro ways
of distributing packages. Which is what he complained about in the
post about Python packaging. Software needs to be distributed.

William Casarin:
> As someone who struggles to package python projects on NixOS, the main
> problems I run into are packages that try to download dependencies at
> build time.  NixOS doesn't allow such things and it interferes with the
> hermetic nature of NixOS.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with "build time" here, as opposed
to something else?
But since Python has to have a packaging system that doesn't rely on
the operating system
(as established elsewhere in this discussion) these packages has to be
downloaded.
Unless the Python package in question has C extensions or similar,
there is no other "build time" at all.

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 11:50 AM Yujiri <yujiri@disroot.org> wrote:
> An
> end-user who doesn't program should never have to use pip or npm.

That is absolutely true, in theory. In practice, however, they have no choice.
There is no possible way for me to make packages for all Linux distros.
In fact, every time I've tried to look into how to make them, I've failed.
Making a RPM or a DEB is an obtuse and arcane form of magic. And
how would I go about making one for the infinite amount of Linux distros
that exist? I haven't got a clue.

And that's not even mentioning Windows.

Thus, anyone interested in using my software has to use pip to install it,

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 11:53 AM Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri Nov 19, 2021 at 11:47 AM CET, Lennart Regebro wrote:
> > I don't understand the requirement to build and run tests without
> > fetching dependencies during the build. It seems plainly absurd to me,
> > as you have to install requirements to run the tests.
>
> The distro will install them through its packages, not via PyPI.

I understand that. This does not in any way answer my questions or comments.

> The rest of your comments similarly misunderstand the situation.

No, they don't.

I don't understand the requirement to build and run tests without
fetching dependencies during the build. It seems plainly absurd to me,
as you have to install requirements to run the tests.

I guess installing into arbitrary prefixes is something you need to
build the rpm/deb packages, that it somehow detects what was installed
and creates the distro package from that?

I've no idea what the problem is with sysroots.

Isn't pkg-config the responsibility of the tool that creates the distro package?

I think there is a lot of confusion here about what is the
responsibility of the distro and their maintainers, and what is the