[Distutils] Upcoming changes to PEP 426/440

[Vinay Sajip]

> 
> I would really like to see one more level of nesting:
> 
> requires : { run : [ ... ], test : [ ... ] }
> 


I've already changed distlib's code several times as the spec has evolved, and would like not to see any more changes so that I can concentrate on some real work ;-)

Seriously, what's currently there now works OK, and the code is fairly simple. I had suggested a variant with even less nesting - one single "requires" list with each entry as it is currently, but having an additional "kind" key with value ":run:", ":test:" etc. This has the merit that you can add additional kinds without major changes, while processing code can filter the list according to its needs at the time. This was shot down by Donald on the basis that it would make things too complicated, or something. Seems a simpler organisation, to me; any argument about additional time to process is unlikely to be a problem in practice, and there are no numbers to point to any performance problems. Currently, with pip, you have to download whole archives while doing dependency resolution, which takes of the order of *seconds* - *minutes* if you're working with Zope/Plone. Doing it in tens/hundreds of milliseconds is sheer luxury :-)

Let's not keep on chopping and changing parts of the JSON schema unless there are actual progress stoppers or missing functional areas, as we recently identified with exports/scripts. It looks as if you and I are the only ones actually implementing this PEP at present, so let's work on interoperability between our implementations so that we can e.g. each build wheels that the other can install, and so on. Interoperability will help confirm that we haven't missed anything. AFAIK distlib tip is up to date with PEP 426/440 as they are today - someone please tell me if they find a counter-example to this assertion.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip