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

[Nick Coghlan]

On 11 February 2016 at 08:12, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> It's not impossible to migrate to something else, but it's impractical to
> migrate to dozens of something elses.  Right now, if we can count on PyPI
> having the source in an easily consumable lowest common denominator format,
> the friction of providing those packages to *our* end users, and updating them
> in a timely manner, is often minimal.  Changing that ecosystem upstream of us,
> either deliberately or otherwise, will likely result in more out of date
> packages in the distros.

One of my own overarching goals in all this is to help facilitate
utilities like pyp2rpm and py2dsc being able to produce policy
compliant distro packages from upstream Python projects *without* any
manual fiddling (at least in the case of pure Python modules and
packages, and hopefully eventually for extension modules as well), so
I'm definitely keeping an eye on the "easy, reliable and automatable
access to source code" aspect.

Maven (and Maven Central) don't actively encourage machine readable
access to source code for published binary artifacts, which turns out
to be one of the key problems that makes integrating the JVM ecosystem
into Linux distributions a bit of a horror show. Improvements in Linux
container tech help with that by putting up a clear "Somebody Else's
Problem" field at the container boundary, but it's still a workaround
for the historical lack of effective collaboration between the two
communities, rather than a real solution.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia