[Twisted-Python] Progress report on splitting packages

[Clark C. Evans]

Radix/Itamar,

It's clear that y'all have put a good deal of thought into this,
so please take my feedback as just meandering thoughts.

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 08:36:07AM -0400, Itamar Shtull-Trauring wrote:
| One problem with leaving it as twisted.news in future releases as Andrew
| suggests in a later email is that we lose our emphasis on the fact that
| it's a separate release with separate versions. Assume following
| scenario - we have lowdown 0.1 and lowdown 0.2, which are API
| incompatible. We want to be very clear that lowdown 0.1 can still be
| used on latest Twisted core, that you don't have to go in lockstep.

I suppose that lockstep has caused release management problems?  How
is this going to solve the problem?  (ie, are you sure it is a
problem, and that the solution fixes it?)

| So, looking at code - is twisted.foo part of core twisted and thus
| probably pretty stable or is it a separate package? What expectations
| can I have of API stability?
|
| Partially this is just Python conventions. Separate packages go in
| separate namespaces. Possibly Java's system is better, but if it doesn't
| really match our users' expectations then we're just going to confuse
| them if we use it.

This seems primarly a documentation problem, that is, 
it is solved with a README document in the package.  Personally,
I've never had issues with modules being stable or not.  Perhaps
a package manager could use a list of packages that are stable?
ie, "python setup.py --with-experimental install"

In any case, I think this package management issue needs to be
addressed no matter what your naming convention is.

| > twisted.xish -> No idea.
| >    No idea. I imagine this will just be made a part of the Jabber
| >    package, whatever that is.
| 
| Yeah. Jabber will probably be in the Words pacakge, so xish will end up
| there (unless people tell us it is generally applicable).

So, it will be in jabber (which I don't need?) till at some
time it turns out that someone needs it, and then it will
move somewhere else.

Bings,

Clark