[Distutils] Metadata fields

[Andrew Kuchling]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 12:24:02AM -0500, Amos Latteier wrote:
>The distutils currently has both a description and a
>long_description. I think that both are useful.

What's the distinction?  Maybe: description is a single line, and
long_description is one or more full paragraphs?

>It also has a couple "derived" fields - contact and
>contact_email are set to either the maintainer (if
>available) or the author. It also has a fullname field which
>is name-version. I think that we can dispense with these
>"derived" fields.

Hmm... if get_contact_email() is removed, then users of the
DistributionMetadata class will have to essentially repeat the same
'if maintainer is not None: <use maintainer> else: <use author>'
logic, so I think it's worth keeping.  A similar argument applies to
fullname.  I don't believe you can say fullname='blah' in the setup()
call, can you?

>I wonder about the download link. The distribution packager
>may not know what this is, assuming that the software can be
>downloaded from the catalog. Maybe this field is set by the
>catalog. Or maybe it doesn't belong in the meta-data.

<light bulb goes on> Good point!  It probably shouldn't, since the
metadata tells you about the package that you have right here as a
tarball/RPM/whatever and the package doesn't need to know where it's
supposed to live on the Web.

If we make this decision, some consequences are that the multiple
implementations permitted by PPD, and hence the need to use XML
instead of a simple text file, both vanish from the Distutils' field
of view.  (Not from the catalog's field of view, of course.)
ActiveState's process would then look something like: grab a
distribution, parse its metadata, convert the metadata to PPD adding
extra things such as the location the package came from, and use the
PPD from that point onward.

>Finally, maybe you should be able to find out which files a
>package installs. Maybe this information is not properly
>speaking meta-data.

I'm doubtful it can go in source dists, thinking of packages that have
optional components.  Here's another thing I'm not sure of: does
METADATA go in both source and binary distributions?  If so, where?
Strawman convention: metadata goes in a METADATA file in the top
directory of source dists.  In binary dists... it should really drop
into a Python package database, shouldn't it?

>I think that it's worth having author information seperate
>from package information. I also think that email address is
>a good author id. This probably means that the catalog
>system will be in charge of managing author meta-data, while
>packag meta-data will be managed by distribution packagers.

So, should we adopt the convention that the e-mail address returned by
get_contact_email() can be used as an author-unique ID by external
cataloguers?  I'll put that in the PEP if the idea meets with
approval.

--amk