[Distutils] Python people want CPAN and how the latter came about

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 11:51 PM, Sridhar Ratnakumar
<sridharr at activestate.com> wrote:
[..]
>> Note that it wouldn't take long to override the upload command so it works
>> independantly from any other *dist command.
>>
>> I could even add a --dist-file option to it so you can point an
>> existing archive to push at PyPI,
>> so running sdist or another *dist command wouldn't be mandatory anymore
>
> The advantage of sdist is that the metadata (PKG-INFO; .egg-info/*.txt) is
> automatically included in the source distribution. For a manually generated
> source distribution, this is not always the case. Consequently, one is
> forced to run the `egg_info` command ..something that is unacceptable if you
> do not want to run Python code in a server that simply mirrors PyPI.

For the Twisted case, we are talking about the very same archive that
is downloaded
by the installers from their websites, so its just a matter of
uploaded an existing archive.

What you are referring to is more likely to be QA controls, and
running sdist doesn't really prevent
from uploading low-QA packages.

The new check command in Distutils (that is run before register or
sdist is called for example)
is the place where we can add QA controls

>
> It would be much interesting to hear arguments for why `sdist` is not suited
> for Twisted releases and see if it can be fixed.

It's orthogonal to having a standalone upload command, but I agree
it's interesting to know.


-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org