[Distutils] PEP 345 - 3 new fields

[Floris Bruynooghe]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 01:17:18PM -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > As suggested in Catalog-SIG by some people, I would like to propose
> > the addition of three more fields for 1.2:
> >
> > "Repository-URL"
> >    A string containing the URL for the package's repository.
> >   Example:
> >        http://svn.python.org/projects/python/trunk/
> >
> 
> I like this in concept, but it's a bit vague as just a URL.  What kind of
> repository is it?  Sniffing is possible, but doesn't work that well.  For
> pip I require something like hg+http://... (with exceptions for schemes that
> are self-describing, like svn: and git:).

Very good point, the reason I proposed these was because I know Debian
uses them but I failed to properly look at their experience.  Actually
turns out that currently they use: Vcs-Svn, Vcs-Git, etc. as well as
Vcs-Browser.  But searching around they are also having this
discussion and looking that changing that because it doens't scale
(needing a new field for each new VCS...).

How about two fields?  Repository-VCS and Repository-URL where the
first is something like "git", "hg", "svn" etc.

> It's also unclear whether it should point to the trunk, a branch, or a tag
> (related to the release).  As a URL that's only even possible for svn, as
> git/hg/bzr all point to the repository and URLs can't point to revisions,
> tags, etc.  (pip has some extensions to the URL format to accommodate these,
> but they aren't formally defined at this time).

It's probably fine to leave that up to the developer and not specify
it, PyPI's just needs to display it to the user.  Whatever the
developer sees fit.  Coming up with a schema that is and future proof
and works with all VCSes out there will be pretty hard.


Regards
Floris