[Distutils] How to deprecate a python package

[Alexander Walters]

The ideal solution is for the maintainer to release one last version of 
the package with copious use of the warnings module.

We really don't want to redirect people blindly - They may be depending 
on undocumented-but-still-api portions of the original's code that a 
replacement package might not implement - or more likely - the 
replacement would only have a similar, but not identical, api.

We really don't want to just remove the package - then dependencies 
break for people who can't upgrade their own codebase for whatever 
reason, or who just need to deploy fresh again.

We might want to implement a package metadata property - Pip can give a 
big flashing warning on install that the package is deprecated by the 
maintainer.  This should be the ONLY use of this property; let's not 
start making rules based on deprecation metadata, that's as bad as just 
removing the package.

This leaves, for me, one real option maintainers can do right now, and 
that's just warn the dickens out of the developer.



On 4/5/2016 14:46, Thomas Güttler wrote:
> I wasted some time because I used a deprecated python package.
>
> I asked the maintainer to remove it, and he looked at the usage statistics: I still gets
> downloaded.
>
> What is the official way to deprecate a python package?
>
> Related discussion:
>
> https://github.com/riklaunim/django-ckeditor/issues/60#issuecomment-205021579
>
> Regards,
>    Thomas Güttler
>