[Catalog-sig] .egg media type? (was: PyPI upload doesn't support eggs?)

[Ryan Tomayko]

On Jun 27, 2005, at 10:32 AM, Bob Ippolito wrote:
> On Jun 27, 2005, at 9:55 AM, Fred Drake wrote:
>> On 6/27/05, Ryan Tomayko <rtomayko at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On an almost related note, what should the MIME content/media  
>>> type be
>>> for serving egg files via HTTP? It may be advantageous to use
>>> "application/zip" [1].
>>
>> Perhaps.

> -1.  Eggs should be opaque to software that doesn't necessarily  
> know what an egg is.

Yea, "application/zip" would be bad as it would clash with zip  
handling applications, making it very unlikely that an egg handling  
application could be provided as the default handler.

But what about "application/egg+zip"? If the "+foo" annotation is  
doable, it would allow egg handling applications to be registered but  
also allow fallback to zip handling applications when there is no egg  
handling application available. I don't see the downside.

> For a point of reference, Java's jar format is 'application/java- 
> archive'.

I apologize for being cynical but, given Java's history of  
disregarding/butchering web and internet architecture, I'd be  
surprised if that was put in place by anyone having experience with  
internet media types. Media types are like view source/HTML, it's  
easy to miss the huge body of spec text dedicated to their behavior.  
I really don't know the history of "application/java-archive" though,  
so take that as an uninformed, biased, and probably a little unfair jab.

Ryan Tomayko
                                  rtomayko at gmail.com
                                  http://naeblis.cx/rtomayko/