On Mon, 15 Apr 2019 at 22:35, Stefano Borini <stefano.bor...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hello, > > I am on a PEP scouting effort to check the current status of python > packaging and its historical context, mostly for learning purposes. I > noted that the PEP defines some functions for pkgutil (e.g. > get_distributions), but I cannot find them. > I tried to do some searching on the mailing list history, but I came > up with pretty much nothing of value. It appears that the topic was > last considered in 2009 (the year of the PEP). dist-info was then > implemented, but I cannot find any information about the missing API, > nor any additional PEP, except for a brief reference in PEP-427. > > Does anyone have some context for this? > > I understand it was 10 years ago, so it's mostly a curiosity. Thanks.
PEP 376 was part of a rather grand plan to re-engineer a lot of Python's packaging tools (distutils and setuptools at the time, mainly). Although the PEP was accepted, a lot of the coding never got done and ultimately the project was abandoned, and we moved over to a more incremental approach of improving what was there, rather than wholesale replacing things. So the PEP itself is something of a mixture now, some parts that are implemented, some parts that are relevant in principle but the details never got filled in, and some parts that simply never happened. >From what I recall (I was around at the time) a lot of the discussion was on distutils-sig - did you check the archives of that list in your searching? But there was a lot of what I would describe as "heated debate" going on at that point, so it may be hard to find anything particularly informative. Hopefully, that's of some use - good luck in your investigations! Paul _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
