2025-07-17 –, Forum Hall
Work started on a lock file specification for Python in earnest on 2021-01-31 and culminated in PEP 751 being accepted on 2025-03-31! While it's great that a conclusion was reached, why did it take 4 years to go from idea to acceptance? Because Python packaging is, in a word, hard.
The flexibility that Python packaging provides has led to over 600,000 projects on PyPI and Python becoming the glue language of the internet, but at the cost of some complexity and not having "one tool to rule them all". This talk will cover why Python packaging is hard and how that played into creating a lock file specification. The history of the spec and what it provides will also be covered.
Beginner
Brett Cannon has been a core developer since 2003, letting him touch much of Python's code base in some way. Thanks to that amount of time and a penchant for writing too much, it has allowed him to become the 5th most prolific PEP (co-)author. He served on the Python steering council for 5 consecutive years, starting with the inaugural council. Probably the biggest things Brett is known for are importlib, trying to make the 2->3 transition easier, pyproject.toml, and his blog at https://snarky.ca . Basically Brett has been around long enough you can thank/blame him for a bunch of stuff.
A big proponent of the Python community, Brett's known for his quote, "I came for the language, but I stayed for the community", which still holds true for him today. He served on the PSF board a number of times and received the Frank Willison Award in 2016.
Brett lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife and child (who just became a toddler, hence the current lack of hobbies).