[Distutils] .ini vs JSON vs YAML meta data format (Was: Simplify 426: Deprecate Author-email and Maintainer-email)

[Donald Stufft]

On Apr 27, 2013, at 5:24 AM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> anatoly techtonik <techtonik <at> gmail.com> writes:
>> Why reinvent own format when there is already YAML with indented sections?
>> Yes, I have to see examples to write in this format, but it is readable and
>> familiar across a broad range of products. It is better than JSON at least,
>> because it doesn't require to wrap anything in quotes.
> 
> I too originally thought YAML might be better, but unfortunately the most
> mature implementation there is (PyYAML) is still not quite ready, as there
> are many open issues around dump() and load(). See for example
> 
> http://pyyaml.org/ticket/264
> 
> "yaml.load() fails to load a dict just saved by yaml.dump()"
> 
> Together with the security issues around YAML (which bit the Rails community
> not that long ago) means that JSON is probably a better bet for the moment.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Vinay Sajip
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig


Luckily the JSON is only the format that is used inside of the sdist. It does not need to be the user facing format. PArt of the work is making it so that one tool does not own the entire process so that people are free to make their own tools that generate sdists and wheels and what not. These tools could easily consume YAML and then spit out a sdist/wheel with JSON inside.

-----------------
Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 841 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/attachments/20130427/a3081aed/attachment.pgp>