[Distutils] Deprecating little used file types/extensions on PyPI?

[Barry Warsaw]

On Aug 15, 2016, at 03:09 PM, Donald Stufft wrote:

>Out of all of these, I think that we can easily remove bdist_dmg, bdist_rpm,
>and bdist_dumb. I also believe that there is a strong case for removing
>bdist_msi and bdist_wininst. I also think we should consider removing
>bdist_egg.

+1 for all of these, or maybe with +0 for bdist_egg in the short term.  My
only concern is that the deprecation period has been long enough, but I do
agree that they should eventually be prohibited.

>On a related but different note, I'd also like to restrict the acceptable
>extensions for sdists. Currently distutils allows people to generate .tar,
>.tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.bz2, .tbz, .zip, .tar.xz, .tar.Z and possibly
>others. This is a bit problematic because each of those types requires a
>different set of optional libraries (which may or may not exist depending on
>Python version) so you can't really use a lot of them (for example, while
>.tar.xz might give you better compression, it's also not usable before Python
>3).
>
>Looking at numbers again, the current number of projects for each file ext
>are:
>
>* .tar.gz: 444,338
>* .zip: 58,774
>* .tar.bz2: 3,265
>* .tgz: 217
>* Everything Else: 0

I'm a little less certain about this.  It's probably okay, although since the
.tgz format is the same as .tar.gz, the tools argument doesn't hold for that
extension.  I know compression nerds like to debate the merits of gz, bz2, and
xz, but I doubt with the size of most of these files, it's going to make any
difference.

FWIW, restricting the extensions would simplify Debian's template for the
PyPI debian/watch file (e.g. the pattern we use to download packages):

https://pypi.debian.net/nose2/nose2-(.+)\.(?:zip|tgz|tbz|txz|(?:tar\.(?:gz|bz2|xz)))

(Ignore the pypi.debian.net redirector.)

That would be a mild win.

Cheers,
-Barry
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