[Pkg-exppsy-maintainers] The future of PyEPL

[Per B. Sederberg]

Hi folks:

Michael has sent a couple chats my way asking about whether there is
pyglet in the future of the PyEPL because that is a major factor in
his decision to maintain a debian package for pyglet.

I'll outline my thoughts below, in no particular order:

 - PyEPL currently works (relatively well) with the pygame backend.
 - Pyglet has very few dependencies (possibly zero) beyond the base
OpenGL libraries and OpenAL for sound (though the current version of
pyglet does not expose the sound recording capabilities of OpenAL).
 - Pyglet is less-bloated than pygame and fast
 - I would love for pyglet to be the backend for both video and sound
in pyepl, but it would take a large effort to refactor the current
code-base.  I am still on the fence as to whether it would make more
sense to start from scratch because there's a lot of code in the
current pyepl that is there specifically to deal with the pygame
backend.
 - One of our short-term goals is to get pyepl working on Windows.
Both pygame and pyglet supposedly work on windows (though I have no
personal experience with this), it just takes more dependencies to
install pygame.
 - Pyglet does not have joystick support for those who may need/want it.
 - I like the way pyglet handles movies better than pygame.

So, to sum up.  I really would love to have pyglet become the pyepl
backend, however, I don't want to face the coding project right now to
port it.  On a related note, if there is no debian package for pyglet,
then the likelihood of working with pyglet drops even more.  That
should not be reason alone for us to package pyglet up, but they do
feed off one another.  For example, if I know there's a debian package
and I can easily experiment with pyglet, then it increases the
likelihood that I would not be able to take pygame anymore and would
feel compelled to push towards the new pyglet-based pyepl version.

Does anyone else have any additional thoughts?

Best,
Per