[Distutils] Proposal: Restrict the characters in a project name

[Nick Coghlan]

One of my major goals for metadata 2.0 is better packaging interoperability
with the Fedora and Debian ecosystems. Since those formally restrict the
set of permitted characters, and the existing Python packaging ecosystem
informally restricts it, it makes sense to limit the character set formally.

By the time metadata 3.0 comes around the question may be worth revisiting,
but arbitrary unicode distribution names are not going to happen for this
version. Supporting them would involve a truckload of extra work in all the
tools and I already expect to have to remove features from the next draft
in order to make it feasible to implement in a timely fashion (Note: given
that I'm not familiar with the details of the distlib, pip or setuptools
code bases, I figure a "this is what I would like, now let's prune the low
value hard to implement parts" is a reasonable way to get feedback from the
people that are likely to end up actually implementing the changes).

Cheers,
Nick.
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