I am one of those grubby little "dark matter" developers. I fled Perl for Python over a decade ago. While I do love Python, one of the impediments (not the on

I am one of those grubby little "dark matter" developers. I fled Perl for Python over a decade ago. While I do love Python, one of the impediments (not the only, and perhaps not the largest) to my progress are the endless packaging issues. Among the larger attractions to Python is that there is supposedly one obvious way to do things and here there is not. Instead, I must make my selection largely based on opinions that have the same foreboding stink of those I associate with arguments over Linux distros: dashed-off dismissals starting with "just" and drive-by engagements with the topic. As a result, I end up rarely going outside of the standard library. In a perverse way, being locked on an un-upgradable (due to Reasons) version of Python 2.7.5 for the foreseeable future has helped put that temptation a bit further away. Yes, Packaging Is Hard. It is certainly beyond me. I will probably never need to package anything I wrote, much less distribute it, so many of my concerns are purely academic. Rather than fussing over things like the walrus operator (really, c'mon), I would love to see those who steer Python buckle down on issues like this, solve them, and then relentlessly backport the solution further back than everyone thinks is reasonable.