On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 at 12:53 Donald Stufft <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Aug 19, 2016, at 2:00 PM, Leonardo Rochael Almeida < > [email protected]> wrote: > > ure, more people will be affected this way than just the folks releasing > on Windows, but given the shortcuts for setting the sdist format per > project or per home directory that Donald mentioned, I think the collective > effort in the migration will be smaller than the continuous effort of > explaining to newcomers that the reason we use a .tar.gz based format for > sdists versus a .zip based format for wheels is some historical accident, > specially if we plan to change sdists back to .zip format in the future... > > > > I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone ask me why people (generally) use > .tar.gz for sdists and why wheels use zip, though I don’t do much beginner > stuff. Do you have some sort of evidence or data to suggest that this is a > problem that people are experiencing or are you theorizing that folks > *might* get confused by this? > > I think the effort changing non-Windows platform is going to be a lot more > effort than changing Windows platform for a few reasons: > > * There are less people releasing on Windows than on non-Windows, the more > people you need to migrate to a new thing, the longer you can expect it to > take. > > * Windows does not come with Python, thus people are generally free to > upgrade their Python or setuptools installation at all [1] meanwhile Python > and setuptools tends to be a core part of non-Windows OSs where upgrading > one or the other can “void the warranty” and cause breakage to the entire > OS, combine this with things like CentOS, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and we lengthen > the time that people are using these older tools by years, maybe even a > decade. > > * More people are using .tar.gz than .zip, which means changing from > .tar.gz is more likely to cause issues (under the assumption that any > change can cause issue, and the more people who have some sort of change > occur to them, the more likely an issue is to occur). > > Oh, and TIL that anyone who has Python 3.4+ installed has a command line > tool for extracting ``.tar.gz`` files [2] >
So I think you're both right, but at different time scales. :) I think Donald is right that the short-term time scale of "now" by suggesting we just go with tar.gz since it has the numbers. But I think Leonardo's point of general alignment with zip for packaging overall is good for the "formally define sdist" time scale and we potentially introduce an .sdist file extension. IOW I think we're all starting to talk in circles and since no one has screamed "the sky is falling" against the proposal, it's probably time to start formalizing a plan.
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