[Distutils] Get dependencies of a package without full download

[Vinay Sajip]

From: Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com>


> Vinay Sajip was maintaining metadata as described here, I'm sure there are functions
> in distil to help fetch it.

Yes, though there is no need for any special API to access it - the

metadata is in JSON files served statically. You just make a standard HTTP
request, using the client library of your choice, to get a specific URL. The files are under

http://www.red-dove.com/pypi/projects/

And you can just use a browser to browse the metadata from this starting point.

> The most severe problem with this data is of course that it is not always correct because
> the environment he evaluated setup.py in to get the data may be different than yours.

Indeed, which is why declarative metadata is so important. Down with setup.py!

Regards,

Vinay Sajip