[Catalog-sig] PyPI enhancement doc

[Ian Bicking]

Richard Jones wrote:
>>However, I think the client can determine the proper way 
>>to unpack the file after downloading; this aspect of files is
>>self-describing.
> 
> 
> The correct meta-type should be supplied to the client too (by Apache, the 
> file server).

I'd trust magic numbers first.  But it doesn't matter -- this is all a 
client issue, not a PyPI issue.  In general I think if the client can do 
it, then the client should do it.

>>An svn trunk is not a package file.  However, it is largely equivalent
>>to an sdist file, though it must be downloaded in a different way;
>>actually performing the download is a client concern, so it doesn't
>>really effect this.
> 
> 
> Are you advocating that release_files somehow point to SVN repos? That doesn't 
> sound right, so I'll presume I've misunderstood you :)

I'm advocating package_urls point to a SVN repository, so that you can 
install from the svn trunk in addition to formal releases.

>>Search should be available with a single field, that searches all of
>>package name, summary, description/description_html, keywords.  This
>>should be on the front page.
> 
> 
> A laudable goal. TSearch2 might be able to do this --- I don't know enough 
> about it. I've recently added Xapian support to Roundup --- and it's really, 
> really easy to use.

It's also quite possibly fast enough to simply use OR and LIKE; I don't 
know if the data is large enough that it's an issue.  I mean, we're just 
now moving off CGI, right... I think full text indexing is a relatively 
fine point of optimization in comparison ;)

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  / http://blog.ianbicking.org