(This probably belongs in a successor to PEP 376, but I'll leave it under the PEP 426 umbrella for now)
One of the points raised regarding PEP 426's integrated metadata format is the potential for runtime issues with pkg_resources as it reads and processes the metadata during startup, particularly if it needs to process any environment markers. While I acknowledge the suggestions I have received that we should really be moving away from the current filesystem based distributed installation information to a real database that properly handle import hooks, I'm looking for something simpler that will make it easier for setuptools and distribute to consume the new metadata format (and thus hopefully make them more amenable to generating it as well) Assuming we add an Entry-Points field as I have proposed in another message, I'd like to propose that installers generate three additional cache files as part of the installation process: <dist-info-dir>/__cache__/version.txt <dist-info-dir>/__cache__/requires-dist.txt <dist-info-dir>/__cache__/entry-points.txt version.txt would just be the version of the installed distribution (no need to parse the main metadata file just to read the version field) requires-dist.txt would be similar to the pkg_resources requires.txt format, but use PEP 426 version specifiers. It would: - only contain runtime requirements where the environment markers match the current system - be split into sections based on the "extras" definition needed to get the environment marker to pass entry-points.txt would be the same format as the pkg_resources entry_points.txt Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig