Consider collaboration with emallson/nppm

[Zearin]

NOTE: This is a (heavily modified) repost from my comment in Issue #5. It was unrelated to that issue, and I really should posted it separately. So, here it is again. Sorry for the semi-dupe.

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I just discovered another project, nppm, which behaves like npm for Python.

I find lots of things about nppm’s approach attractive:

• the command line interface is already familiar
• the command line interface is a single executable with subcommands (rather than a handful of py-* commands)
• it uses package.json, which can be parsed by any JSON parser (although I miss the ability to include comments!)
• it makes Python significantly more attractive to Node.js developers who are “py-curious” ;-)

However, the project has a few drawbacks:

• it still uses a setup.py! I love your “no setup.py in the source; generate it for the distribution” philosophy.
• it is unconcerned with distribution. Unlike pypackage, nppm was designed for use one-off research projects. In this use case, the project is never intended to be published, simply portable (with the minimum possible time and effort to get a project running on a new machine).

I wonder if you two could collaborate?

If you did, it could really bring Python packaging out of the dark ages into the modern era. NPM really hits all the right notes for package management; I feel no shame in advocating an approach imitate their conventions. :P

I have asked @emallson if he is willing to collaborate with you. You should probably read his full comment, but here is a quote:

I would be interested in collab with @ccpgames, but we're solving fundamentally different problems. I wanted to be able to clone a repo and run it easily; they want to be able to easily build, test, and then distribute a package. I would love a tool that would do both, and right now I think there is room in the python ecosystem for just that. At this point, though, these two projects have sort of orthogonal goals.

Note that I don't really have much experience with distributing python packages. The most useful thing for me would be to have someone(s) to consult with about what the correct way to build+distribute packages is (because screwing that up would be very, very bad).

However, you do have “experience distributing python packages”. If you were to consult with @emallson, I feel that together you really could achieve a project that successfully integrates the best of both nppm and pypackage.

I have always wanted to ditch setup.py, and pypackage does that beautifully. I have also wanted the best-in-class CLI of Node.js’s npm, and emallson’s nppm does that pretty well.

O!, the wonders that would be possible if the two of you worked together! ☻

Are you open to?

[a-tal]

hey,

not opposed to a collab here by any means, if we can work together to create a unified experience that'd be great.

I do agree that we're also solving the problem from different angles though. pypackage aims to make distributed packages that can be easily created and shared (installation really only being a side-effect), whereas nppm is more based around managing your environment, making modules available (if I understand it correctly).

anyway, not opposed to a collab at all, the next couple weeks I'm more/less unavailable though with fanfest things.