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

[Donald Stufft]

> On Sep 17, 2014, at 1:05 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 17 September 2014 11:23, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>> I think that’s what we all want, the difference is that myself and some
>> others don’t think it’s acceptable to build ontop of things which aren’t
>> standardized. We’ve had ~15 years of implementation defined “standards”, I
>> don’t think blessing officially something which adds more implementation
>> defined standards is the right path forward. This means that things take
>> longer (It took well over a year for PEP 440, which is just focused around
>> version numbers!) but I think in the end it will end up with a solution that
>> is far more robust and far less likely to end up in a situation where we are
>> today where if you don’t use the exact same tooling as everyone else you’re
>> likely to have problems.
>> 
>> That static metadata is one of the reasons *why* distlib isn’t suitable for
>> the reference implementation. I have no idea if your specific implementation
>> is good, bad, or somewhere in between but afaik there isn’t even a spec at
>> all much less a general discussion about how it should be structured.
> 
> Right, and I think that's a good way to *explicitly* position the two levels:
> 
> * packaging & pip now aim to be strict implementations of the agreed
> standards, with only the distutils/setuptools/pkg_resources de facto
> standards supported for reasons of compatibility
> 
> * distlib & distil aim to explore what the current drafts of the
> standards (perhaps with a few experimental embellishments) make
> possible
> 
> I've come to realise we need both of those capabilities, and that the
> previous arguments around the appropriate scope of distlib related to
> trying to get it to serve two fundamentally incompatible use cases.
> 
> Perhaps we should make that official policy? Anything in PEP 426 and
> PEP 459 (and other packaging metadata and installation database
> related PEPs) needs to be trialled in distlib/distil before the PEPs
> can be accepted? distlib could operate permanently under a PEP 411
> style "provisional API" guideline, and if folks aren't comfortable
> with "this may break without warning", then they can stick to the
> stable packaging/pip layer.
> 


I’m OK with calling out this relationship though I don’t think it should
be a mandatory thing. I think we’re all adults and able to figure out when
it makes sense to trial it in distil/distlib or not.

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

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