[Distutils] Dependency extensions

[Matt Good]

On Oct 11, 2007, at 2:20 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>> At 04:07 PM 10/11/2007 -0400, Tres Seaver wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> I have use cases for a couple of extensions to how requirements are
>>> spelled in a setuptools-enabled project.
>>
>> You should probably include them, then.  You only sent the
>> specifications for how you'd like to implement *solutions* for the
>> problems posed by your use cases.  ;-)
>>
>> In other words, you didn't explain why it is you think you know
>> better than the package owner what version his package needs, or why
>> the existing dependency URL features don't do what you want.
>
>
> In the case of overrides, I have seen lots of cases where project
> authors have overspecified dependencies in their requirements for a
> given distribution, mostly because they don't want to have to support
> their package configurations they don't test.  I'm fine with that line
> of thought, as long as I have a way to reuse their packaged stuff in
> combination with mine, where I *do* test with a different version than
> they do

Just because you tested your app against "bar" 1.4 and "baz" 1.3  
doesn't mean that every feature of "bar" will work with "baz" 1.3.   
Another app could break because it uses a feature of "bar" that  
doesn't work with that version of "baz" and the authors of one of  
those packages will get the bug report about it instead of you.  If  
you're willing to help with the testing the author might be willing  
to relax the requirements, but trying to override another package's  
requirements is likely to lead to problems.

-- Matt

http://five.sentenc.es