[Twisted-Python] zope.interface

David Ripton dripton at ripton.net
Mon Dec 14 11:27:46 EST 2009


On 2009.12.14 11:48:48 +0000, Phil Mayers wrote:
> Jared Gisin wrote:
> > Is there a good document that explains why zope.interface is necessary 
> > to the twisted project?
> 
> A counter-question: Is there a good document that explains why people 
> care? It's just another dependency isn't it?

Sure.  But Twisted has a very small number of dependencies (I think
Python and Zope Interface are the only ones that are absolutely
required) so it does increase the total effort to install Twisted on an
OS without a good package manager by a noticable amount.

Zope Interface is a good library, and I think the Twisted team made the
right call when they decided to use it rather than continue to maintain
their own interface library.  It's not their fault that installing
Python dependencies on some operating systems is still way harder than
it should be.

It would be great if general Python installation and packaging tools
improved to the point where one could easily install Twisted and all its
dependencies on any supported OS using PyPI, as easily as we can on
Linux or BSD using the OS package manager, or as easily as we can
install Perl packages from CPAN, or as easily as we can run Java stuff
using Java Web Start, etc.  Enough smart people care about this problem
that I'm pretty sure it'll be solved over the next couple of years.
Which is too far away to save me from having to write big nasty custom
Windows and MacOS installers for my current game, but might mean that
this is the last time I ever have to do it.

-- 
David Ripton    dripton at ripton.net



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