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by manoDev 169 days ago
> Java will never become a player in CLI tooling until build packaging becomes first class.

Python packaging has always been painful and it’s a popular option for CLI regardless.

I don’t think there only rational explanations, technology choices are a lot about culture and dogmas too.
3 comments
exabrial 169 days ago
I think the python counterexample speaks a lot. A lot of languages "hide" their footprint in /usr/local or in a venv somewhere; out of sight, out of mind.

The JVM installs cleanly and is self contained, but any artifacts, by default, are not shared system wide as this _always_ have been seen as a security risk. The hot term for it today is "supply chain attack".

Instead, most Java programs tow their dependencies, giving it a bloated feel because its all just there, present in front of you, stored and running as your own user.

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myko 169 days ago
I know Python has been big in the space for longer than uv's existence, but uv (https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) has made Python packaging dead simple to me
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CamouflagedKiwi 169 days ago
I don't think uv makes distribution simple? Unless I've missed something, it doesn't do anything out of the box to help you produce a standalone artifact - it builds wheels but those are only useful for a user that already has python and pip, and don't do anything to deal with Python version drift etc.
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gegtik 169 days ago
uv can install a version of python of your choosing in addition to pulling the specific versions of libraries specified in your lockfile. it's extremely dummy-resistant.
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CamouflagedKiwi 168 days ago
Right, but that means the end user has to have (or install) uv, and then you ship them all your code, and then they can use uv to run that. That's a development workflow - and exactly what I meant when I said that uv didn't solve distribution in the way a language like Go or Rust does by producing a single binary.
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maxandersen 168 days ago
uv does not solve all problems - but it for sure greatly improves chance of python tools working.

jbang is to java, what uv(x) is to python and what npm/npmx is to javascript.

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somegenericdev 168 days ago
Python packaging isn't really any more difficult than Rust, C# or Go if you use pyinstaller [1]

A single executable is always just one "pyinstaller --onefile --noconsole main.py" away.

[1] https://pyinstaller.org/en/stable/usage.html

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