[Distutils] How to get list of package requirements from PyPI without downloading egg?

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 12:05 AM 10/26/2006 -0600, Jeremy Kloth wrote:
>On Wednesday 25 October 2006 11:51 pm, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> > At 12:39 AM 10/26/2006 -0400, Tim Cera wrote:
> > >If the above idea doesn't go anywhere - is it possible that the package
> > >requirements could be added to CheeseShop's XMLRPC?
> >
> > Requirements can be Python version and platform-specific, so I'm afraid
> > this can't be reasonably captured in a Cheeseshop entry at the present
> > time.
>
>Except Cheeseshop already supports the PEP 314 metadeta fields Requires,
>Provides and Obsoletes.  They are available to all packages built with Python
>2.5 distutils.

Indeed it does...  but that information is both unused and useless at the 
moment.


>That said, the community still needs to agree on what the names of the
>requirements are.

Yep - like I said, it's both unused and useless.  :)


>It solves the Python version problem by defining the PEP 345 metadata field
>Requires-Python.

No, it doesn't, actually.  My statement was that the requirements 
*themselves* can be version and platform specific.  PEP 314 only allows for 
one set of requirements for a package, not one set of requirements per 
version and platform.

In any case, saying that we have a solution and that we just have to decide 
what it means, reminds me of a passage from the Douglas Adams novel, "Dirk 
Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", wherein Dirk makes a cryptic scrawl on 
a piece of paper and declares that it is the solution to the mystery!  They 
need only determine what language he wrote it in, and translate it back to 
English...  :)

Personally, I think PEP 314 should be rejected, as this issue is only one 
of its flaws.  I'm surprised to see it is now marked "final", given the 
near total lack of discussion on it, except for me periodically posting 
about its flaws (since 2005, no less).  None of the new fields except 
Download-URL are actually useful.

PEP 314 delenda est.