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wirrbel
wirrbel

Reputation: 3299

Python dependencies: Merging two packages into one

I have two python packages A and B that I would like to merge together into A, i.e. all functionality of B is now reachable in A.B. Previously, A-1.0 depended on B-1.0. Now I want to avoid, that users of A-2.0 still have B-1.0 installed and I don't know how to handle this properly.

Different solutions/ideas I came up with:

I welcome your opinion, and experiences

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2282

Answers (1)

Juergen
Juergen

Reputation: 12728

I think, you can't! (at least without using such tricks, as you described).

The Python package system has (to my knowledge) no such notion as "allowed" packages. There could be a person, that invents a different package C that he calls B, but with totally different functionality. Such a notion would prohibit users of your package A to use package C (alias B).

So I would communicate to users of A, that B is no longer needed and make sure, that your newer coding does not reference B at all. And when somebody installs B, it is like a third party library that has nothing to do with yours.

Of course, when the functionality of A and B is intermingled very much and the other user code also has to deal with B directly and has (allowed) side effects on A, you could get in trouble when an old B is still installed. But than your initial design was not the best either.

In such a case (and when you really have to merge the packages -- see below) I would recommend, that you make a totally new package name like "newA" to underscore the fact, that something has fundamentally changed (and thus an intermingling between old A and B also would more likely be detected).

But of course, I would second the argument of msw, that you create your problem by yourself. Normally it is also better to have smaller packages (if they are of a reasonable size, of course) instead of bigger "I manage the world" packages. You just can combine smaller packages better for different applications.

Upvotes: 1

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