[Distutils] Metadata fields

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 11:46:36AM -0500, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
>But then the meta-data file can get lost; I like having it in the
>tarball so if you have the source, you automatically have the
>metadata.

Yeah, I like it too.  But it's harder to do when the "source" is an
HP-UX sd format file (which I don't know the format on), for example.
I wrote the code to directly extract the PKG-INFO data out of a .tar,
.tar.gz, .tar.bz, or .tar.Z file on the trip back home, so we're
covered on that side...  .zip should be fairly easy to deal with...

>The problem is, "where do we put it?"  If I generate an RPM, where
>does PKG-INFO go?  How do you find it again?  Where does it go in a
>Windows .exe installer so that a catalog can read it out?  This is a
>case where separate metadata would really make sense, but I think it
>can't be resolved for 2.1.

Well, you could write it to the "dist" file with a different suffix,
and/or upload the meta-data and the Windows .exe file to my catalog
server as a multi-part MIME message.  I have the code ready to do
that from both the client and server side.

Platform isn't really that much information, unless it's encoded like
the GNU platforms.  "redhat-7.0-x86"  Something like that.

>That's up to the cataloguer, not the Distutils.  I'll reword that in
>the PEP.

I'll buy that.

Sean
-- 
 I keep just enough vi knowledge in my head so that I can edit a Makefile
 and build Emacs.  -- Tony Foiani, 1999
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo@tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python