[Catalog-sig] Extending the package meta-data with more detailed download information

[M.-A. Lemburg]

"Martin v. Löwis" wrote:
>> Yes, you could have distutils generate most of those fields,
>> except for the URL and comment.
> 
> What's the use case for these new data? Is this for files
> also hosted at PyPI, or for files hosted elsewhere? Who would
> use that information, and what for?

As mentioned in the original email, the use case is to have
PyPI list download information for all distribution files
of a package together with a set of details that allow automatic
selection of a file for installation by a package manager
tool.

PyPI currently only provides limited details for each uploaded
file and doesn't support referencing files hosted on other
servers at all.

I'd like to extend PyPI to also provide support for listing
files on other servers as well as making it possible for
the package manager tools to automatically select the right
installation file for the intended target platform.

At eGenix we often find that users download and install the
wrong distribution files for the target Python installation -
even though we do try to make this selection process as simple
as possible on the download pages.

To enhance the user experience we were thinking about providing
a tool to automate the whole process. However, if PIP can
provide this functionality based on the extended distribution
file information, we'd rather point our users to PIP.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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