[Catalog-sig] [Distutils] pre-PEP : Synthesis of previous threads, and irc talks + proposals

[zooko]

On Oct 1, 2008, at 19:10 PM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> I hate the idea of dynamic metadata in fact. I can't express precisely
> why at that point.

Me too and me too.

Perhaps it would help to distinguish between requiring a certain  
functionality and requiring a specific codebase which implements that  
functionality.

For example: distribution A requires the functionality of ctypes.   
That part is statically, declaratively always true.

However, distribution A doesn't necessarily require a *distribution*  
named "ctypes".  If you are running on Python 2.6, then that  
functionality is already present.  If there is a new distribution out  
there named "new_ctypes" which provides the same functionality and  
the same interface but is a completely different code base, then the  
presence of "new_ctypes" satisfies distribution A's requirements.

The former question is simple, static, and declarative.  The latter  
question isn't.

In most cases there is only one implementation of a given interface,  
so we make do by equating the interface with the implementation.

I wonder how Debian and Fedora handle this sort of issue?

Regards,

Zooko
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