[Distutils] Ensuring source availability for PyPI entries / PEP: Build system abstraction for pip/conda etc

[Paul Moore]

On 10 February 2016 at 09:34, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure I'm parsing your comment correctly, but if you are
> suggesting that PyPI should no longer allow supporting
> non-open-source packages, this is definitely not going to
> happen.

Not at all. Although as far as I know the number of closed-source
packages on PyPI is vanishingly small...

My concern is that we seem to be opening up the option of using
non-setuptools build systems without having a good solution for people
*wishing* to upload sources. It's more a matter of timing - if we
allow people to use (say) flit for their builds then presumably a
proportion of people will, because it's easier to use than setuptools,
*for builds*. But those people will then find that distributing their
sources isn't something that flit covers, so they'll make up their own
approach (if it were me, I'd probably just point people at the
project's github account).

Once people get set up with a workflow that goes like this (build
wheels and point people to github for source) it'll be harder to
encourage them later to switch *back* to a process of uploading
sources to PyPI.

And that I do think is bad - that we end up pushing people who would
otherwise happily use PyPI for source and binary hosting, to end up
with a solution where they host binaries only on PyPI and make the
source available via another (non-standardised) means.

In no way though am I proposing that we stop people making deliberate
choices on how they distribute their packages. Just that we make
hosting both source and binaries on PyPI the "no friction" easy option
for (the majority of?) people who don't really mind, and just want to
make their work publicly available.

Paul

PS This has gone a long way off the topic of the build interface
proposal, so I'm glad it's been spun off into its own thread. I'm now
of the view that this relates at best peripherally to the build
interface proposal, which I'll comment on in the other thread.