On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 at 10:19, Nathaniel Smith njs@pobox.com wrote:
On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 2:04 AM, Paul Moore p.f.moore@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 at 09:54, Paul Moore p.f.moore@gmail.com wrote:
More seriously, I think it's extremely important that we do clarify those boundaries.
I should add that I'm more than happy to write something up that more clearly defines the role of the "packaging standards" process (and by extension, my role as packaging BDFL-delegate (we really need a mode concise term!)). It's not something that I think we've needed up to now, but if there's going to be confusion between "what's a PyPA issue" and "what's a packaging standards issue", I'm happy to do so. It may take me a week or to to do so, though. (Nick, I'd want to involve you as an initial reviewer of that document, if that's OK).
Personally, there's no real confusion in my mind over where the boundary lies, but Dustin's document makes it pretty clear than not everyone shares this clarity ;-)
I'm sure we can come up with some distinction, but I wonder: is having two separate processes actually serving a useful purpose? Either way it's basically the same people (i.e., the people reading this), doing the same thing (writing a document, debating it, building consensus, etc.), right, with slightly different set dressing?
Possibly. I view the standards process as being very much community-focused, and about code interoperability, in the sense that it's about standards that *all* tools (whether PyPA or not) must use to interact with the packaging infrastructure. As such, consensus on distutils-sig is key, much more so, to be honest, than PyPA consensus. Conversely, PyPA governance questions and project standards are of little interest to people outside of the PyPA and discussion can reasonably be focused on PyPA members' opinions.
But if people want to say that it's the same process, then we have to establish if it's me or the PyPA BDFRN that is the deciding authority for that process.
To give a very specific example, I very strongly want (assuming people aren't telling me that they think I'm doing a bad job!) to remain as the deciding authority for standards like PEP 517 and compatibility tags. But I've no interest in managing PyPA governance proposals. So that's a clear distinction, at least in my mind :-) On the other hand, having the same formal process, just with different subject areas and responsible individuals, is fine with me - I'm not obsessed with bureaucracy, just with results.
Paul