Mailman 3 November 2019 - Distutils-SIG

Improving Communication
by Donald Stufft July 30, 2020

July 30, 2020

Currently in the packaging space, we have a number of avenues for communication, which are: - distutils-sig - pypa-dev - virtualenv-users - Other project specific mailing lists - IRC - gitter - Various issue trackers spread across multiple platforms. - Probably more places I’m not remembering. The result of this is that all discussion ends up being super fractured amongst the various places. Sometimes that is exactly what you want (for instance, someone who is working on the wheel specs probably doesn’t care about deprecation policy and internal module renaming in pip) and sometimes that ends up being the opposite of what you want (for instance, when you’re describing something that touches PyPI, setuptools, flit, pip, etc all at once). Theoretically the idea is that distutils-sig is where cross project reaching stuff goes, IRC/gitter is where real time discussion goes, and the various project mailing lists and issue trackers are where the project specific bits go. The problem is that often times doesn’t actually happen in practice except for the largest and most obvious of changes. I think our current “communications stack” kind of sucks, and I’d love to figure out a better way for us to handle this that solves the sort of weird “independent but related” set of projects we have here. From my POV, a list of our major problems are: * Discussion gets fractured across a variety of platforms and locations, which can make it difficult to actually keep up with what’s going on but also to know how to loop in someone relevant if their input would be valuable. You have to more or less simultaneously know someone’s email, Github username, IRC nick, bitbucket username, etc to be able to bring threads of discussion to people’s attention. * It’s not always clear to users where a discussion should go, often times they’ll come to one location and need to get redirected to another location. If any discussion did happen in the incorrect location, it tends to need to get restarted in the new location (and depending on the specific platform, it may be impossible to actually redirect everyone over to the proper location, so you again, end up fractured with the discussion happening in two places). * A lot of the technology in this stack is particularly old, and lacks a lot of the modern day affordances that newer things have. An example is being able to edit a discussion post to fix typos that can hinder the ability of others to actually understand whats being talked about. In your typical mailing list or IRC there’s no mechanism by which you can edit an already sent message, so your only option is to either let the problem ride and hope it doesn’t trip up too many people, or send an additional message to correct the error. However these show up as additional, later messages which someone might not even see until they’ve already been thoroughly confused by the first message (since people tend to read email/IRC in a linear fashion). - There is a lot of things in this one, other things are things like being able to control in a more fine grained manner what email you’re going to get. - Holy crap, formatting and typography to make things actually readable and not a big block of plaintext. * We don’t have a clear way for users to get help, leaving users to treat random issues, discussion areas, etc as a support forum, rather than some place that’s actually optimized for that. Some of this ties back into some of the earlier things too, where it’s hard to actually redirect discussions These aren’t *new* problems, and often times the existing members of a community are the least effected becasue they’ve already spent effort learning the ins and outs and also curating a (typically custom) workflow that they’ve grown accustomed too. The problem with that is that often times that means that new users are left out, and the community gets smaller and smaller as time goes on as people leave and aren’t replaced with new blood, because they’re driven off but the issues with the stack. A big part of the place this is coming from, is me sitting back and realizing that I tend to be drawn towards pulling discussions into Github issues rather than onto the varying mailing lists, not because that’s always the most appropriate place for it, but because it’s the least painful place in terms of features and functionality. I figure if I’m doing that, when I already have a significant investment in setting up tooling and being involved here, that others (and particularly new users) are likely feeling the same way. - Donald

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PyPi not allowing duplicate filenames
by Chris Barker April 20, 2020

April 20, 2020

Hi all, PyPi does not allow duplicate file names -- this makes lots of sense, because you really don't want people to go to PyPi one day and grab a file, and then go there another day, grab a file with exactly the same name, and have it be a different file. However.... We are all too human, and make mistakes when doing a release. All to often someone pushed a broken file up to PyPi, often realizes it pretty quickly -- before anyone has a chance to even download it (or only the dev team as, for testing...). In fact, I was in a sprint last summer, and we decided to push our package up to PyPi -- granted, we were all careless amateurish noobs, but we ended up making I think 4! minor version bumps because we had done something stupid in the sdist. Also -- the latest numpy release got caught in this, too: """ * We ran into a problem with pipy not allowing reuse of filenames and a resulting proliferation of *.*.*.postN releases. Not only were the names getting out of hand, some packages were unable to work with the postN suffix. """ So -- I propose that PyPi allow projects to replace existing files if they REALLY REALLY want to. You should have to jump through all sorts of hoops, and make it really clear that it is a BAD IDEA in the general case, but it'd be good to have it be possible. After all -- PyPi does not take on responsibility for anything else about what's in those packages, and Python itself is all about "we're all consenting adults here" I suppose we could even put in some heuristics about how long the file as been there, how many times it's been downloaded, etc. Just a thought.....I really hate systems that don't let me roll back mistakes, even when I discover them almost immediately... -CHB -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker(a)noaa.gov

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ImportError running 'test' on namespace package - other package in namespace not found
by Jason R. Coombs April 17, 2020

April 17, 2020

I've got two projects: mynamespace.myprojectA and mynamespace.myprojectB myprojectB depends on myprojectA. I'm using setuptools 0.6c8 to manage both projects. Both projects are registered using 'setup develop'. Both projects are accessible from an interactive interpreter: PS C:\Users\me\projects> python Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Feb 21 2008, 13:11:45) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import mynamespace.myprojectA >>> import mynamespace.myprojectB >>> from mynamespace.myprojectA import mymoduleZ However, when I run 'setup test' in myprojectB, the tests fail with File ".mymoduleZ.py", line NNN, in [some context] from mynamespace.myprojectA.mymoduleZ import MyClassC ImportError: No module named myprojectA.mymoduleZ In setup.py, the test_suite is nose.collector. I searched and couldn't find anyone else with this problem. Is this a supported configuration? Is there something I can do to make tests work with interdependent projects with the same root namespace? If there's not something obvious I should be doing differently, I'm happy to put together a minimal test case that reproduces the problem. Any suggestions are appreciated. Sincerely, Jason R. Coombs

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Surviving a Compromise of PyPI - PEP 458 and 480
by Vladimir Diaz Feb. 12, 2020

Feb. 12, 2020

Hello everyone, I am a research programmer at the NYU School of Engineering. My colleagues (Trishank Kuppusamy and Justin Cappos) and I are requesting community feedback on our proposal, "Surviving a Compromise of PyPI." The two-stage proposal can be reviewed online at: PEP 458 http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0458/ PEP 480 http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0480/ Summary of the Proposal: "Surviving a Compromise of PyPI" proposes how the Python Package Index (PyPI) can be amended to better protect end users from altered or malicious packages, and to minimize the extent of PyPI compromises against affected users. The proposed integration allows package managers such as pip to be more secure against various types of security attacks on PyPI and defend end users from attackers responding to package requests. Specifically, these PEPs describe how PyPI processes should be adapted to generate and incorporate repository metadata, which are signed text files that describe the packages and metadata available on PyPI. Package managers request (along with the packages) the metadata on PyPI to verify the authenticity of packages before they are installed. The changes to PyPI and tools will be minimal by leveraging a library, The Update Framework <https://github.com/theupdateframework/tuf>, that generates and transparently validates the relevant metadata. The first stage of the proposal (PEP 458 <http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0458/>) uses a basic security model that supports verification of PyPI packages signed with cryptographic keys stored on PyPI, requires no action from developers and end users, and protects against malicious CDNs and public mirrors. To support continuous delivery of uploaded packages, PyPI administrators sign for uploaded packages with an online key stored on PyPI infrastructure. This level of security prevents packages from being accidentally or deliberately tampered with by a mirror or a CDN because the mirror or CDN will not have any of the keys required to sign for projects. The second stage of the proposal (PEP 480 <http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0480/>) is an extension to the basic security model (discussed in PEP 458) that supports end-to-end verification of signed packages. End-to-end signing allows both PyPI and developers to sign for the packages that are downloaded by end users. If the PyPI infrastructure were to be compromised, attackers would be unable to serve malicious versions of these packages without access to the project's developer key. As in PEP 458, no additional action is required by end users. However, PyPI administrators will need to periodically (perhaps every few months) sign metadata with an offline key. PEP 480 also proposes an easy-to-use key management solution for developers, how to interface with a potential build farm on PyPI infrastructure, and discusses the security benefits of end-to-end signing. The second stage of the proposal simultaneously supports real-time project registration and developer signatures, and when configured to maximize security on PyPI, less than 1% of end users will be at risk even if an attacker controls PyPI and goes undetected for a month. We thank Nick Coghlan and Donald Stufft for their valuable contributions, and Giovanni Bajo and Anatoly Techtonik for their feedback. Thanks, PEP 458 & 480 authors.

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localization, accessibility, & security progress on PyPI
by Sumana Harihareswara Jan. 17, 2020

Jan. 17, 2020

I've just posted a final progress report on Discourse about the last month of Open Tech Fund-supported progress on PyPI's localization and accessibility features. Including a screenshot and a bar graph! https://discuss.python.org/t/pypi-localization-accessibility-progress/2284/4 We've finished our OTF-funded accessibility & internationalization work. And sometime this month people will be able to use PyPI in Brazilian Portugese and Japanese! -- Sumana Harihareswara PyPI project manager Changeset Consulting https://changeset.nyc

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Post UTME Screening Form
by tinyang60＠gmail.com Nov. 29, 2019

Nov. 29, 2019

<a href="https://www.downloadpastquestion.com.ng/category/admission-form/">Post UTME Screening form</a> and registration 2020/2021 academic session is out.

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Post UTME Screening Form
by tinyang60＠gmail.com Nov. 29, 2019

Nov. 29, 2019

The <a href="https://www.downloadpastquestion.com.ng/category/admission-form/">Post UTME Screening form</a> and registration 2020/2021 academic session is out

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Apply by Nov 22 for paid contract on pip
by Sumana Harihareswara Nov. 26, 2019

Nov. 26, 2019

Freelancers and other programming consultants: Get paid to improve pip. Specifically, to help finish the dependency resolver overhaul. https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2019/11/seeking-developers-for-paid-contract.h… Role 1: We seek a senior Python developer, work starting in mid-December 2019 or early January 2020, work ending at the end of May 2020. Pay: USD$116,375 total (665 hours of work at $175 per hour). Detailed task list and timeline: https://github.com/python/request-for/blob/master/2020-pip/RFP.md#role-1-se… Role 2: We seek an intermediate-to-senior Python developer, work starting in early January 2020, till the end of December 2020. Pay: USD$103,700 (670 hours of work at $150 per hour), plus $1600 budgeted for onboarding travel and $1600 budgeted for PyCon travel. Details: https://github.com/python/request-for/blob/master/2020-pip/RFP.md#role-2-in… Full request for proposals: https://github.com/python/request-for/blob/master/2020-pip/RFP.md Please apply by November 22nd, or please spread the word. Here's the giant list of reasons why this project is important: https://wiki.python.org/psf/Fundable%20Packaging%20Improvements#Finish_depe… -- Sumana Harihareswara contract project manager for PSF Changeset Consulting https://changeset.nyc

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Re: Keywords field in metadata: space separated or comma separated?
by Pradyun Gedam Nov. 19, 2019

Nov. 19, 2019

Resending, since the previous attempt was blocked by the mailing list. On Tue, 19 Nov 2019 at 11:53 PM, Pradyun Gedam <pradyunsg(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 1:31 PM Thomas Kluyver <thomas(a)kluyver.me.uk> > wrote: > >> There seems to be a loose agreement in favour of changing the spec to >> match what distutils & setuptools do, so I've opened a PR against the spec: >> >> https://github.com/pypa/packaging.python.org/pull/674 >> > > The PR has been merged. > > Overall, this looks like a good idea to me, as might be clear from the > fact that I approved the PR. > > -- > Pradyun >

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Keywords field in metadata: space separated or comma separated?
by Thomas Kluyver Nov. 19, 2019

Nov. 19, 2019

Hi all, The metadata specification shows the keyword field as a space separated list: https://packaging.python.org/specifications/core-metadata/#keywords PEP 566 backs that up, saying that the transformation to JSON should split that field on whitespace: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0566/#json-compatible-metadata However, distutils reads and writes that field as a comma separated list: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/5383956583bb758f3828513bcdd011871f24… https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/5383956583bb758f3828513bcdd011871f24… And setuptools has inherited that: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/68dbb703705cdd64e25261a6fcc1c0cc96b… https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/68dbb703705cdd64e25261a6fcc1c0cc96b… Given the dominance of distutils and setuptools, and the difficulty of changing distutils, I suspect it's easier to change the spec to adopt their de-facto standard as the official standard. But I'd like confirmation of this, as it will require some changes in Flit. The comma-separated format allows keywords containing a space - like 'orbital mechanics' in the example I was investigating (poliastro). Thanks, Thomas

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