[Distutils] [PEP 243] upload status is bogus

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 04:20:55AM -0800, Greg Stein wrote:
>4xx failures mean "you can probably fix it and resubmit."  5xx failures are
>"just give up, buddy." If a web server reports 4xx because of a config

For this application, a 500 error should be considered a temporary failure.
I believe that HTTP should report 200 if it successfully ran the CGI,
anything else if it did not.  I would hardly call making use of the X-
headers "Yet Another Protocol".

>[ and don't even get me started on how the package is uploaded; I'm playing
>  soft here; those MD5 checksums and the multipart stuff have alternatives

"playing soft here"?  Geeze, this isn't some competition...  This whole
section in the brackets makes it sound like you were just holding those
comments back so you could make me look like an idiot if I didn't respond
favorably to your initial message proclaiming my work "bogus".

The repository system has repeatedly suffered because of trying to make it
perfect.  I'm not going to commit the HTTP RFCs to memory just to track
down some vague mentions you make about my not conforming to spec.  As far
as I know, I'm following the standards.  The "multipart stuff" is RFC1867,
and I'd submit that they defined X- application-specific headers for a
reason.  Is there an RFC which says that applications running on top of
HTTP *MUST* use HTTP response codes in preference to X- headers,
Content-MD5, etc?  I honestly don't know...

If you want to describe more fully your other suggestions, I'd be
interested in hearing them.  I've already taken note of the Content-MD5
header, that one could be nice...

>At a minimum, the PEP should incorporate this alternate suggestion for
>reporting status.

Meaning that all clients *HAVE* to support both methods?  That's what the
"protocol_version" field is for -- if I'm convinced it's the right way to
go, I'll set up the server so it can handle both methods, change the PEP to
use the HTTP codes *ONLY*.

Sean
-- 
 Brooks's Law of Prototypes: Plan to throw one away, you will anyhow.
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo@tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python