[Distutils] [Catalog-sig] Prototype setuptools-specific PyPI index.

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>> If people do misspell a package name when invoking easy_install,
>> they get the feature that you consider of no value.
> 
> That is not correct. Not all packages are in PyPI.  Using a package that
> isn't in PyPI will trigger a fetch of that page.

I don't understand. What page is fetched if the package is not in PyPI?

> It isn't misspelled,
> it's just not there.  People should *not* misspell pages when using
> setuptools.  They should certainly not use misspelled package names in
> requirements.  In my strongly help opinion, allowing imprecise names in
> requirements and setuptools command if of negative value.

I cannot comment on. I don't use setuptools, and have no intuition what
is good or bad when using it (for example, I consider .egg files and
the notion of eggs inherently bad).

My main motivation to provide that page is that the setuptools
specification says it should be there. As this entire infrastructure
is for the sake of setuptools, I find it pointless to not support
setuptools fully.

> I'd be happy to contribute my polling version.  That solves my problems
> and I can't justify the additional effort to figure out the cheeseshop
> softtware.

I'd like to hear other opinions here. Would people prefer if the index
was always correct (and perhaps somewhat slow), or would they prefer
instead that it is super-efficient (and somewhat out-of-date)?

Regards,
Martin