On Thu, Oct 19, 2017, at 08:01 PM, Donald Stufft wrote:

On Oct 19, 2017, at 2:54 PM, Thomas Kluyver <thomas@kluyver.me.uk> wrote:

I don't think this needs to be controversial. They are a de-facto

packaging standard, whether or not that's theoretically necessary.

There's more than one tool that can create them (setuptools, flit), and

more than one that can consume them (pkg_resources, entrypoints). Lots

of packages use them, and they're not going anywhere soon. Describing

the format properly seems like a clear win.

I disagree they are a packaging standard and I think it would be crummy to define it as one. I believe it is a setuptools feature, that flit and entrypoints wants to integrate with a setuptools feature is fine, but that doesn’t make it a packaging standard just because it came from setuptools. I agree that describing the format properly is a clear win, but I believe it belongs in the setuptools documentation.

pip and distlib also independently read this format without going through setuptools. It's a de-facto standard already. Entry points are also the most common way for packages to install command-line scripts, and the most effective way to do so across different platforms. So it's essential that install tools do understand this.

Much of our packaging standards were built out of setuptools features anyway - why pretend that this is different?