Lack of standardization in Python packaging tools leading to frustration and inefficiency

Signals over time

3 observed signals across 1 sources, tracked for 1 days. Confidence: low.

What people are saying Observed

• “You are absolutely delusional. None of what you write is true. > This is the entire point of build backends This is false. Python doesn't have any format, any way of describing how to compile a package. There's a gaping void where such a specification should be. Every tool that does it, has its own bespoke way of configuring it. Most of them don't even care what PyPA has to say about it. > is no longer true/hasn’t been true for several years. This has been true as recently as this morning. Nothing has changed in the last twenty years, probably more. No change is planned. The people who put themselves in charge of the process are incompetent to the point that, just like you, they don't understand the assignment and produce piles of worthless garbage instead. > Build backends are not perfect Build backends is a nonsense invented by PyPA because they didn't understand what actually needs to be done. The whole concept is worthless. It doesn't address the issue: it doesn't have a generic method describing how to build a Python package. Python doesn't need build backends. This whole circus needs to go. > you can run `uv add` or `pi”

  Hacker News · frustration

• “You pretend not to understand what "packaging" means. No, it's not just the format description, even though the format description incorporates useless fields that are designed specifically to help setuptools to overcome the problems they created for themselves (all the "Dynamic" stuff is worthless otherwise). Packaging, in this context, means a unified interface that describes to the tool what needs to happen to the source code in order for it to be transformed into a binary package. There are about a dozen tools that can package Python binary modules, setuptools, SWIG, bind11 and so on. Each does it in a completely different way. In practice, if you want to build the packages now available on PyPI, you will not be able to come up with a single tool that can build every one of them, probably, not even half of them. All this talk about standardized metadata is worthless because of what actually goes into the package. The metadata is the least of your problems when packaging Python code.”

  Hacker News · frustration

• “You pretty much opened with a... I'm sorry for a strong word, but it is what it is... a lie. No. Python packaging isn't standardized. Tools aren't interchangeable. And they are all bad, uv including. I wish it didn't exist, so that there were fewer problems for people like me, whose job is, essentially, working around the problems created by people who build tools like uv and people who mindlessly adopt them. To answer to your specific arguments: nobody is going to believe that your proposed solution is going to hold water longer than it takes for milk to go sour. Too many people, too often had burned on Python packaging tools to trust some tool not to break, to be consistent etc. Without even realizing it, you suggested that someone else should use a crutch to work around the problem you created, and you expected them to just go along with the flow and live by the bottom of the barrel lowest possible "standards" that exist in Python packaging world. No wonder they don't want uv-build... why would any sensible person want it?”

  Hacker News · complaint