[Catalog-sig] an immutable mirror of PyPI

[P.J. Eby]

At 04:18 PM 7/5/2011 +0200, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>That's why I asked
>whether PyPI is primarily a hosting site for developers (as opposed to
>something like Debian or Wikipedia which have notions about a
>collaborative effort of some kind, and care about preserving history).

It's right there in the name: Python Package *Index*.  In other 
words, it's an index of packages.  Hosting the packages is 
optional.  Heck, a package actually having any *code* to download at 
all is optional, since you can list a package you merely intend to 
develop.  Or you might just have a revision control link, etc.

So no, it's not a curated repository of code.  If that were the case, 
it'd be better named the Python Code Repository or some such.

The perspective that you have is influenced by your use case for 
PyPI; by nature, these other sorts of packages (i.e. ones without 
uploaded, released code) are ones you don't care about.  But that 
doesn't mean they don't exist.

In any case, you can't turn PyPI into PyCR by the simple expedient of 
disallowing deletions; you'd need actual curators and a fresh website 
that doesn't contain all the unreleased, unmaintained, un-existent, 
or un-open-source packages found on PyPI.