[Grok-dev] libraries to use with Grok

[Kent Tenney]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 5:50 PM, Steve Schmechel
<steveschmechel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Are we possibly talking about two different things?
> There was an idea about a list of particular "Useful Libraries"
> and an idea about an "Overview of Namespaces".
>
> Unfortunately, both discussions evolved in the same thread.

Right, I don't have a clear picture of the delegation of intent.

>
> The spreadsheet I wish people to review has to do with "useful libraries".
>
> The useful libraries document was not meant to be an index to all
> possible code that could be used with Grok.  Quite the opposite; a
> manageable list of libraries that have proven useful to those with
> much experience building Grok apps, so that the rest of us can
> benefit from that experience.
>
> For most people using the libraries, the key information would be the
> PyPI project homepage and package name so that they can add it to
> their project's build out.  Most probably do not want to link to the
> latest trunk code of a library.  If they want to see the source code,
> they can peek in the downloaded eggs.

I guess I'm not "most people" since I seem to end up wanting
to look at the trunk of a project that interests me.

Maybe there are few enough like me that any attempt to provide
more information results in clutter which reduces the value of
the content for most people. That seems to be true for readers
of this list.

I still think a compromise would be to leverage wiki capability
and provide links to editable pages from each item. The link could
be unobtrusive, maybe the supplemental pages would grow
usefulness, maybe not. If they remained templates which said "Use this page
to collect links and information regarding ${topic name}" no
harm done.

>
> That said, a link to a repository would be nice, but you have to deal
> with upkeep when projects switch VCS or hosts.  At least PyPI is fairly
> static.

There might be community members with motivation to help keep
repository links up to date: project owners interested in recruiting
help, and folks like me: after chasing down a repository, I'd be
glad to update a wiki page.

>
> There is a namespace overview document at:
> http://grok.zope.org/about/overview-of-namespaces
>
> I don't believe this is intended to be an index of all code using a
> particular namespace either.  That would be very hard to keep up to date.

Again, community members might be motivated to help.

>
> Generally, the type of code and the people contributing it remain fairly
> constant within a namespace.  This document is an overview of those facts.
>
> While for Dolman.* all of the packages in the namespace probably could
> be associated with one project homepage, that would not be the case
> many others.  The links would end up being either trivial associations
> that could be easily found with a search engine, or deep links into
> large sites like zope.org which would be hard to maintain.
>
> It just comes down to the fact that finding something by namespace
> is by nature a hit-or-miss endeavor.

OK, maybe it's futile to try to make it less hit-or-miss.

> You might find a particular library or package that leads you to a
> project website which lists some other related packages.
>
> I think the namespace overview document is meant more for going in the
> opposite direction; you encounter a package being referenced in some
> code you are examining, and the namespace gives you some general context
> of its origin and purpose.
>
> It's more of a "tuck this away in your memory to improve future comprehension" type of document, than a exhaustive reference document.

OK, though I'm not convinced that offering additional info needs
to detract from the statement of origin and purpose.

>
> Anyway, I don't mean to sound dismissive or discouraging.
> Maybe others feel an exhaustive list with links would be useful also, so
> feel free to gather support and make it happen.

OK, I'll give it a shot on another thread.

Thanks,
Kent

>
> For now, I am pretty satisfied with the context and experience I can
> tap into using the current overview documents.
>
> Regards,
> Steve
>