[Distutils] Name the software! Package quality tester.

[P.J. Eby]

At 10:22 PM 3/9/2011 -0500, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>>>They certainly aren't "projects" in any sense that most people would
>>>understand.
>>
>>I don't follow you.
>
>Maybe we have lost the context here, but I think I agree with Jim.
>Even though PyPI hosts "projects", they (the files you download)
>aren't "projects" - they are "distributions" or "packages".

I think you have lost the context; here, project refers to the thing 
that you have versions of, which distributions in turn are discrete 
manifestations of.

That is, a "project" has "releases" which has "distributions".  For example,

   http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Trac

is a PyPI page for a project,

   http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Trac/0.12.2

is the PyPI page for release 0.12.2 of that project, and

   http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/T/Trac/Trac-0.12.2.tar.gz

is one of the distributions available for that release of that project.

PyPI allows one to host a project that has neither releases nor 
distributions, so in that sense it is certainly an index of projects, 
in much the same way that ASF, SourceForge, MozDev, and others are.