[Distutils] PEP 241 draft

[Andrew Kuchling]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 06:04:39AM -0800, Paul Prescod wrote:
>When I look at the headers for mail messages, I see increasingly
>structured information stuffed into key/value pairs. That's because
>information tends to start simple and become complex as time goes by.
>Therefore I would prefer we choose a future-proof format now.

That still leaves the choice/design of a DTD, though, and given the
community's propensity for trying to cover every possibility, I'm
doubtful of getting that done in time.  2.1final is scheduled for
April 13, just under a month away, and I'd like to get it in for
beta2, so there's time pressure here.

(Aside: While Amos' patch includes the ability for
DistributionMetadata instances to be parsed from XML format, the
Distutils don't actually *need* that capability right now, and may
never need it at all, which means they don't need to contain a parser.
DistributionMetadata could just generate XML using %s in 2.1, assuming
a common DTD can be decided upon.)

Here's a proposed compromise: use RFC-822 format in 2.1final, leaving
us with 6 months over the Python 2.2 development cycle to arrive at a
DTD, at which point 2.2 can switch to putting XML in the METADATA
file.  It's not difficult to determine if METADATA is XML or RFC-822
(look for an <?xml prefix in various encodings), so catalog
implementors can just do that and support both.  Come to think of it,
that's also easier if the initial DTD selected is all wrong and we
have to change it; imps need a simple RFC-822 converter, not two
handlers for two different XML formats.

--amk