[Distutils] RFC: Binary Distribution Format for distutils2/packaging

[Jim Fulton]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 7:29 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14 March 2012 19:04, Tarek Ziadé <tarek at ziade.org> wrote:
>>> Please can we have a new format that only has a Python version in the
>>> filename if it matters?
>>
>> isn't that supposed to be the source release ?
>
> Yes, basically - at least as far as I understand.
>
>> Why would someone create a binary release when
>> it's pure Python ?
>
> I wish I knew. But people do - mostly egg format files. But I think
> this is partly because of the confusion between
> egg-as-distribution-format vs egg-as-directly-usable-object that PJE
> alludes to in his emails.

I sometimes create platform-independent eggs to indicate a Python-version
dependency.  Until d2/p, there was no other way to indicate dependence
on a particular Python version.

Note that the terminology is confusing.  I think eggs are defined
to be a "binary" distribution format, so eggs containing
C extensions are referred to as "platform-specific".

You raise a good point about how to deal with optional extensions.
There's no meta data to indicate whether there are optional extensions
that might guide an automated installer.

Jim

-- 
Jim Fulton
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfulton