[Distutils] RFC: Updating PEP 345

[Jim Fulton]

On Apr 10, 2009, at 10:30 AM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Jim Fulton <jim at zope.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 9, 2009, at 6:40 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:
>>
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>>> Jim Fulton wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Apr 9, 2009, at 12:55 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>> I have backed off on the notion of overloading 'Requires:' /
>>>>> 'Provides:'
>>>>> / 'Obsoletes:', following Jim's notion of deprecating them in  
>>>>> favor of
>>>>> new fields.  I named them 'Requires-Dist:', 'Provides-Dist:', and
>>>>> 'Obsoletes-Dist'.
>>>>>
>>>>> "Stock" distutils should probably spell the arguments to
>>>>> distutils.core.setup predictably:  'requires_dist',  
>>>>> 'provides_dist',
>>>>> 'obsoletes_dist'.  setuptools can treat 'install_requires' as an
>>>>> undeprecated alias for 'requires_dist'.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What is the rational for this?  I'd strongly prefer the "requires"
>>>> argument name to be compatible with setuptools.  Otherwise, I think
>>>> we'll introduce needless confusion.
>>>
>>> I'm aiming for self-consistency within the 'PKG-INFO' field names:
>>>
>>> - 'Requires'
>>> - 'Requires-Python'
>>> - 'Requires-External'
>>>
>>> The 'Obsoletes' and 'Provides' fields also need
>>> distutils-project-oriented versions, so picking a suffix ('-Dist')  
>>> which
>>> matched for them seemed cleanest.
>>>
>>> Add that to the fact that setuptools has no way (yet) to spell
>>> 'provides' or 'obsoletes', and it seemed to me clearer to just make
>>> setuptools current argument an alias for the "consistent" version  
>>> to be
>>> landed in distutils.
>>
>>
>> I get that. In fact, I already got that. :) I think backward  
>> compatibility
>> with existing wide usage is more important and not incompatible.
>
> we could also support both spellings for one version, and deprecate
> the old name with a warning,


Strong: -1.

Why change the name? A different name isn't going to be better enough  
to be worth the hassle. Deprecation is waaaay overrated as a tool for  
reducing the pain of making people change their code or habits.

Jim

--
Jim Fulton
Zope Corporation