[Distutils] Metadata 2.0: Is there a formal spec for a requirement?

[Paul Moore]

On 16 September 2014 13:12, holger krekel <holger at merlinux.eu> wrote:
>> I’m hesitant to include any of this stuff in the stdlib as of right now. It wouldn’t
>> have helped you here since PEP 440 wasn’t approved until after 3.4 was out
>> so the earliest it would be in is Python 3.5. Perhaps once we have most of
>> the pieces fitted together and working sanely it would be a good time to
>> figure out what, if any should be moved to the stdlib.
>
> I suggest to rather list good PEP-implementing modules/packages
> on some "pypa" PEP-independent administered page and reference that page
> prominently.  Given that we have a mixed py27/py3 python ecosystem and
> will do so for some more years, and given that things are still moving,
> focusing on adding such to the stdlib is wasted effort IMHO.

Agreed. The stdlib should be a longer-term goal, but that doesn't mean
there shouldn't be reference implementations that are authoritative
and documented as such, ideally referenced from the relevant PEPs and
documented on a PyPA webpage.

I really shouldn't be looking at a list of version numbers and wanting
to get the latest one and be grabbing distutils.version.LooseVersion
just because it's good enough and life's too short to go searching for
a "proper" answer. And I do, regularly :-(

Paul

PS This isn't about pressuring anyone to write such modules. If they
don't exist and are needed, I'm more than willing to help write them,
but only if they are intended as reference implementations, not just
as "yet another version module". I've no particular wish to set myself
up as a competitor to setuptools and distlib :-)