On Nov 18, 2015 6:37 PM, "Nick Coghlan" <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 19 November 2015 at 06:14, Marcus Smith <qwcode@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 11:42 AM, Donald Stufft <donald@stufft.io> wrote:
> >> Only half way thinking about this right this moment, but I think so yes.
> >> It’s largely designed for private use cases which is why it’s not allowed on
> >> PyPI. It’s essentially a replacement for dependency_links.
> >
> >
> > practically speaking, isn't it also a future replacement for
> > "<url>#egg=name" syntax in pip vcs urls?... i.e.  using  "name@<url>"
> > instead?
>
> Yep, pip's VCS URLs were one of the main motivators for that feature:
> http://pip.readthedocs.org/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#vcs-support
>
> The reason the support is defined as tool dependent is because we have
> no idea how version control is going to evolve, and different tools
> will support different version control systems (e.g. pip itself
> supports bzr, but I'd be surprised if any new tools did, and it's
> entirely possible now for tools to become popular while only
> supporting git).

Another protocol that new tools might reasonably disagree about supporting is good ol' ftp. (Not sure if even pip supports it or not.)

Besides which, we haven't yet standardized what should be found at the end of that URL (unless it happens to be a prebuilt wheel, but that's probably not the most common usage).

-n