[Distutils] PEP 527 - Removing Un(der)used file types/extensions on PyPI

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 23.08.2016 18:46, Donald Stufft wrote:
> Since it seemed like there was enough here for a proper PEP I went ahead and
> write one up, which is now PEP 527. The tl;dr of it is that:
> 
> * Everything but sdist, bdist_wheel, and bdist_egg get deprecated.

-1 on removing bdist_wininst and bdist_msi. If PyPI is supposed
to retain the status of the main website to go search for Python
package downloads, it needs to be able to provide ways of hosting
all distribution types which are supported by distutils, including
ones which target platform configuration management system such as
the Windows one.

The number of downloads is really irrelevant for this kind of
argument. Since the PEP proposes to keep the existing uploads
around, I also don't follow the argument of reduced maintenance.
PyPI will still have to host and support downloading those file
types.

To me, all this sounds a lot like eventually turning PyPI into a
pip package index, which no longer serves the original intent of
a Python package index. I think that's taking a wrong turn in the
development of such an index.

IMO, we should aim to reunite separate indexes such as the
one used for conda or the win32 index maintained by
Christoph Golke back into PyPI, not create even more
separation by removing platform specific formats.

> * The only allowed extension for sdist is ``.tar.gz``.

Strong -1 on this part. .tar.gz may be a good choice for Unix,
but it definitely isn't for Windows. Even for Unix, .zip files
have the advantage of not messing up file ownerships and
permissions.

> * Phased in Deprecation.
> 
> I've included the text below, or you can see it online at
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0527/ once the PEP website is updated.

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