[Distutils] Design rationale for the egg format ?

[P.J. Eby]

At 01:25 PM 6/15/2010 +0900, David Cournapeau wrote:
>On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 10:36 AM, P.J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
>
> > As I said above, "it *also* scales better for performance" -- i.e., it's a
> > secondary concern.
>
>ok.
>
> > Â The #1 reason for separating metadata files is that it
> > makes the addition of new metadata much easier than maintaining a single
> > monolithic format.
>
>Do you still think it is true today ? I am asking because AFAIK, there
>aren't many packages besides setuptools which use those metadata ?

That depends on what you mean "besides setuptools".  Entry points, 
for example, are used by various apps and frameworks that implement 
plugins, and these in turn are used by app and plugin 
developers.  There's also a package (EggTranslations I think?) that 
uses metadata files for i18n discovery, allowing plugins to provide 
translations for an app, or translations for other plugins.

So, it's true that it's not very common that a library or app would 
directly use metadata files -- in general, you'll go through an 
intermediary such as setuptools or EggTranslations...  or even a 
third level, such as an app framework that then uses setuptools 
internally to implement a plugin API.


>I
>don't mean to criticize the design, just to see if you would do things
>differently today.

Oh, many things.  But separating metadata files is definitely NOT one of them.

As you might notice, PEP 376 and Distutils2 build even further on 
this pattern, with roughly the same rationale(s).