[Distutils] Idea: move accepted interoperability specifications to packaging.python.org

[Nick Coghlan]

On 19 April 2015 at 04:21, holger krekel <holger at merlinux.eu> wrote:
>
> I'd appreciate a "current packaging specs" site which ideally also states
> how pypa tools support it, since which version.

OK, I've filed this idea as
https://github.com/pypa/python-packaging-user-guide/issues/151, but I
have no idea when I'll find time to work on it myself. If anyone had
the time and inclination to start putting something together (perhaps
starting with the already accepted PEP 440), that would be wonderful.

Cheers,
Nick.


>
> holger
>
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 16:18 -0400, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> Daniel's started work on a new revision of the wheel specification,
>> and it's crystallised a concern for me that's been building for a
>> while: the Python Enhancement Proposal process is fundamentally a
>> *change management* process and fundamentally ill-suited to acting as
>> a *hosting service* for the resulting reference documentation.
>>
>> This is why we're seeing awkward splits like the one I have in PEP
>> 440, where the specification itself is up top, with the rationale for
>> changes below, and the large amounts of supporting material in PEP
>> 426, where the specification is mixed in with a lot of background and
>> rationale that isn't relevant if you just want the technical details
>> of the latest version of the format.
>>
>> It also creates a problem where links to PEP based reference documents
>> are fundamentally unstable - when we define a new version of the wheel
>> format in a new PEP then folks are going to have to follow the daisy
>> chain from PEP 427 through to the new PEP, rather than having a stable
>> link that automatically presents the latest version of the format,
>> perhaps with archived copies of the old version readily available.
>>
>> I think I see a way to resolve this, and I believe it should be fairly
>> straightforward: we could create a "specifications" section on
>> packaging.python.org, and as we next revise them, we start migrating
>> the specs themselves out of the PEP system and into
>> packaging.python.org. This would be akin to the change in the Python
>> 3.3, where the specification of the way the import system worked
>> finally moved from PEP 302 into the language reference.
>>
>> Under that model, the wheel 2.0 would be specifically focused on
>> describing and justifying the *changes* between 1.0 and 2.0, but the
>> final spec itself would be a standalone document living on
>> packaging.python.org, and prominently linked to from both PEP 427
>> (which it would Supersede) and from the new PEP.
>>
>> This approach also gives a much nicer model for fixing typos in the
>> specifications - those would just be ordinary GitHub PR's on the
>> packaging.python.org repo, rather than needing to update the PEPs
>> repo.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Nick.
>>
>> --
>> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>> _______________________________________________
>> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
>>
>
> --
> about me:    http://holgerkrekel.net/about-me/
> contracting: http://merlinux.eu



-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia