Dear Djangonauts,
I’m a little baffled right now and I guess you all have a lot to do, so please forgive me if I’m disturbing. Going back to the begin of the Google summer of code, my mentor James and I discussed the best strategy to start implementing reusable Django-apps and the so-called “Hotclub of France” conventions (e.g. a public web repository for reusable apps). Unfortunately, a real discussion did not really take off, neither on the discussion list nor on IRC.
It now seems to me as it could just be to early for Django to have such a repository. Everybody, including me, loves to fiddle with Django in some degree and is suspicious of automatic and ready-made products. After creating ticket #6080 I’m a little tired of bringing up the same arguments again and again on the net. That’s why I wanted to ask you, if you generally see a chance for this to come before Django 1.0 and how you handle this at your projects if at all.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:32 am
Gday,
My thoughts on this issue are probably not as deep and well thought out as yours, but…
Django at this time is more aimed at the developer, more than the end system integrator. This will mean that Django will probably only be deployed by businesses/users who can have afford to hire a developer and have them integrate it into the site.
To get to the person who just wants a “feature x with integrated y”, the real trick would be to have a “standard” where you can get/browse apps from the admin interface, have them plug in and automatically just “work”, (bonus points for smooth updates).
One could argue that this could become very phpnuke like, in regards to its functionality, but it doesn’t take away anything from django, apps can still be used stand alone, but this would reduce the barrier of entry for people deploying django apps.
It is a hard problem, but if you make it useful for enough people with a decent function set, it wont matter if you use egg/setuptools/tar.
Build it as an app, and they will come.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Hi Wade!
Thank you so much for your opinion, you hit the nail on the head!
You are right, maby my thoughts were too technology centered and not so much about best practices and daily use. There are many ways of package and code management, each different in its approach and overall usefulness — but it every time largely depends on the audience.
setuptools and the PyPI for example do their job pretty well and became the de facto standard for Python-based software even without official support. That’s why I tried to use that set of tools for Django, though I haven’t thought of the implications on Django beginners. Even if Django is written in Python and inherits its utility, it presents itself as a standalone software, sometimes denying its background. Which is obviously alright.
I’m not to afraid of the “phpnuke” metaphor (I’m used to be a PHP fanboy :) rather of the structure a future app repository could have. Luckily more and more communities about Django pop up and show what works and what not. I really like the simplicity of djangopeople.net for example. Let’s see what the next months will bring. I’m thrilled to be at this year’s Pycon for example :)