Consider adding alternate binary source

[xiota]

In Examples section, there is a link to a potential alternate binary source.

https://peps.python.org/pep-0711/

[alextremblay]

That's a fantastic idea, I absolutely love it!

The only reasons I haven't implemented support for this yet are:

• PEP0711 has been in draft status with no delegate for over a year now, with (as far as I know) no movement towards adoption by the rest of the industry
• adding support for PyBIs alongside PBS builds of python is a non-trivial amount of work
• We don't actually gain much from doing all that work. The primary benefit for adding an alternate binary source is redundancy in case the primary binary source (python-build-standalone) goes down.
  • PBS builds are hosted on github, which was a stellar track record for reliability. Currently the only working implementation of PyBIs that I'm aware of is https://pybi.vorpus.org/. I don't know where this domain is hosted, I don't know how it's funded, I have very little reason to believe that it's more reliable than PBS hosting
  • PBS binaries are battle-tested, and the build scripts used to produce them have gone through MANY iterations over the years to catch and correct weird niche bugs and complications, the same can't be said for the build scripts used to build PyBIs

For these reasons, I'm not inclined to add support for PyBIs at the moment. If PEP0711 picks up / gains traction and we start getting PYBIs hosted on or by PYPI, I will definitely start working towards adding support for PYBIs. Until then, i just don't think it's worth the effort involved

[alextremblay]

That being said, if you're willing to submit a PR adding this support alongside existing PBS support, and willing to commit to supporting the feature if it breaks in the future, I will happily accept such a PR 😄

[xiota]

Thank you for explaining why this would not be sufficiently worthwhile to implement at this time.