[Distutils] PEP 426 updated (with more than you ever wanted to know about version schemes)

[Chris Jerdonek]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Making
> sure the necessary metadata for the build step is provided as part of
> the sdist is the responsibility of the Archiver.
>
> We don't really *care* what format the Archiver uses to gather info
> from the user, so long as it uses PEPs 426 and 427 to communicate
> those details to later steps in the chain.
>
> So, to my mind, the next PEP we're missing is actually one for the
> *sdist* format itself, including a definition for how the
> meta-packaging system should invoke the sdist->wheel build step,
> rather than one for the Archiver/Builder configuration data (which is
> what PEP 390 tries to be, and which I'm not convinced needs to be
> standardised at all, so long as the Archiver takes care of translating
> it to the standard formats).

Can you explain your rationale here?  Instinctively, it seems like it
would benefit project authors and Archiver authors to have a
standardized (or at least "blessed") way of providing data to
Archivers.  For example, there would be less for project authors to
learn if they need to use different Archivers for different projects.
I think I understand why it's not *necessary* (because only the
project owners/authors would be using the Archiver), but naively it
seems like it would help to standardize this.

--Chris