Ok so, if i draft a pep for said proposal, will it die under the weight of a thousand bike sheds? On 5 May 2016 3:09 PM, "Nick Coghlan" <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5 May 2016 at 06:28, Robert Collins <robe...@robertcollins.net> wrote: > > the only reason I got involved in build system discussions was > > pushback 18months or so back when I implemented a proof of concept for > > pip that just used setup.cfg. I'd be very happy to ignore all the > > build system stuff and just do bootstrap requirements in setup.cfg. > > I know I'm one of the folks that has historically been dubious of the > "just use setup.cfg" idea, due to the assorted problems with the > ini-style format not extending particularly well to tree-structured > data (beyond the single level of file sections). > > However, my point of view has changed over that time: > > 1. We've repeatedly run up against the "JSON is good for programs > talking to each other, but lousy as a human-facing interface" problem > 2. By way of PEPs 440 and 508, we've got a lot more experience in > figuring out how to effectively bless de facto practices as properly > documented standards (even when it makes the latter more complicated > than we'd like) > 3. The ongoing popularity of setup.cfg shows that while ini-style may > not be perfect for this use case, it clearly makes it over the > threshold of "good enough" > 4. Folks that *really* want a different input format (whether that's > YAML, TOML, or something else entirely) will still be free to treat > setup.cfg as a generated file, just as setup.py can be a generated > file today > > The last couple of years have also given me a whole range of > opportunities (outside distutils-sig) to apply the mantra "the goal is > to make things better than the status quo, not to make them perfect", > and that has meant getting better at distinguishing what I would do > given unlimited development resources from what makes the most sense > given the development resources that are actually available. > > So when I ask myself now "What's the *simplest* thing we could do that > will make things better than the status quo?", then the answer I come > up with today is your original idea: bless setup.cfg (or at least a > subset of it) as a standardised interface. > > Don't get me wrong, I still think that answer has significant > downsides - I've just come around to the view that "is likely to be > easy to implement and adopt" are upsides that can outweigh a whole lot > of downsides :) > > Cheers, > Nick. > > -- > Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia >
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