[Distutils] Reviving PEP 470 - Removing External Hosting support on PyPI

[Paul Moore]

On 27 August 2015 at 12:53, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
> We can add documentation, it’s basically “stick some files in a directory, run python -m http.server”, adjusted for someone’s need for performance and “production” readiness. We make it pretty easy to make one with —find-links, any old web server with an auto index and a directory full of files will do it.

The devil's in the details, though.

* Do I need to use canonical names for packages in my index? Assuming
so, what *are* the rules for a "canonical name"?
* I need a main page with package name -> package page links on it.
The link text is what needs to be the package name, yes?
* All that matters on the package page is the targets of all the links
- these should point to downloadable files, yes?

It shouldn't be hard to write these up (and as I said, the PEP
proposes to do so in the email sent to package owners, all I'm
suggesting is store that information somewhere permanent as well).

And one other point - the way the PEP talks, I believe we're
suggesting people set something up that works for --extra-index-url,
*not* --find-links. Pip has two different discovery mechanisms here,
and I think we need to be careful over that. The PEP talks about an
external *index*, which I interpret as --extra-index-url. Maybe
there's another point here - the PEP should say "installers may have
additional discovery methods, but they *MUST* clearly state which one
corresponds to the index specification method described in this PEP".

Paul