Vinay Sajip reworded the 'Provides-Dist' definition to explicitly say:

> The use of multiple names in this field *must not* be used for
> bundling distributions together. It is intended for use when
> projects are forked and merged over time ...

(1) Then how *should* the "bundle-of-several-components" case be
represented?

(2) How is 'Provides-Dist' different from 'Obsoletes-Dist'?
The only difference I can see is that it may be a bit more polite
to people who do want to install multiple versions of a (possibly
abstract) package.

The useful way to bundle a bunch of things would be to just include them all in an executable folder or zipfile with __main__.py. PEP 426 and the package database would not get involved. The bundle would be distributed as an application you can download and use, not as an sdist on PyPI.

The intent of Provides and Obsoletes is different. Obsoletes would not satisfy a requirement during dependency resolution.

The RPM guide explains a similar system:

This brings the total to four types of dependencies that the RPM system tracks:

Requires, which tracks the capabilities a package requires
Provides, which tracks the capabilities a package provides for other packages
Conflicts, which describes the capabilities that if installed, conflict with capabilities in a package
Obsoletes, which describes the capabilities that this package will make obsolete

Packages advertise this dependency information. Each dependency holds the type, such as requires, a capability, such as a shared library or a package name, and optionally a version number, such as requiring the python package at a version number greater than or equal to 2.2 (python >= 2.2).

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Draft_Documentation/0.1/html/RPM_Guide/ch-dependencies.html#RPM_Guide-Dependencies-obsoletes