On 19 February 2013 13:59, Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: > It's OK if people don't want to read the detailed rationale provided > for each of the major changes as part of the PEP, or if they want to > dispute a particular piece of that rationale. But merely going "it's > too complicated!" or "metadata 1.2 failed, so 2.0 will fail as well!" > is not a reasonable response. Software distribution is complicated - > trying to oversimplify it is one of the reasons setuptools became > necessary.
Nevertheless, the landscape is confusing. PEPs 241, 314, 345, 426, 390, 376 and 386 are all relevant to one extent or another, and only PEPs 426 (Metadata 2.0) and 390 (Static Metadata for Distutils - setup.cfg) are still in Draft format. The others are all Accepted or Final. And yet PEPs 345, 390 and 386 are unused and likely to remain so. I believe that the only ones that are *actually* of use are 241, 314 and 426 (Metadata 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0, but not 1.2) and 376 (Database of Installed Python Distributions) although 376 still has a number of flaws. I'd suggest that these should be marked as Final, and the others as Rejected, so that we have a clear statement of what is actually supported. Making sure that users have the means to write code that *uses* these standards using functionality available in the stdlib is then the next step as you say. It is critical that this is done, because packaging tools are unique in that the barrier to using external dependencies is particularly high for them - for example, pip's reliance on distribute/setuptools is necessary, but has been problematic at times. Paul PS Apologies for using a load of PEP numbers without explanation. Here's a glossary: Metadata 1.0 - PEP 241 Metadata 1.1 - PEP 314 Metadata 1.2 - PEP 345 Metadata 1.3 - PEP 426 Static Metadata for Distutils - PEP 390 Database of Installed Python Distributions - PEP 376 Changing the version comparison module in Distutils - PEP 386 _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
