[Catalog-sig] Standardized way of getting to a package download URL in Cheeseshop

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Grig Gheorghiu wrote:
> It would be nice if there was a standardized way to get to a download
> URL for a given package listed at the Cheeseshop. Currently some
> packages are hosted there, some are hosted elsewhere, but in any case
> one would think that a pointer to the full URL for the package file
> could be kept on the Cheeseshop page for that package and made
> available via an API.

The challenge here is that for packages with no downloadable files,
it is difficult to infer a URL from the metadata. There is a download
URL, but it is imprecise, as there is only a single one, not multiple
download URLs depending on type of package to download.

So different packages use different strategies, such as only
giving the base URL, and expecting the user to actually read
the page at the download URL to understand where the package
proper is available.

> I'd volunteer to start this ball rolling if nobody else has been
> working on it. What is the procedure for contributing to the PyPI
> project?

Depends on the nature of the change you propose: for a change
in the meta-data, you need to write a PEP, and provide patches to
distutils.

Regards,
Martin