[Distutils] tracking requested vs dependency installs in PEP 376 metadata

[Chris Withers]

Ronald Oussoren wrote:
> 
>> Code should always specify their dependencies, not doing so will cause 
>> you problems down the line...
> 
> Sure, and I do that for for any real code. But do you really expect that 
> users are careful to specify dependencies for each and every script they 
> write.  

Yes, because it is easy.

> That may be true for development shops, but I don't expect that 
> casual users are so careful.

Then they shouldn't be surprised when things go wrong for them.

> But this discussion is moot anyway, the proposed metadata is meant to 
> help packaging tools to track which packages seem to be orphaned and for 
> which they can ask the user if those packages should be removed from the 
> system, instead of always removing seemingly orphaned packages.

Indeed. Although I'd hope there's some --prune option or such which 
automatically removes all orphaned packages.

cheers,

Chris

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