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

[Robert Collins]

On 11 February 2016 at 11:12, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Feb 10, 2016, at 10:08 AM, Paul Moore wrote:
>
>>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.
>
> That worries me a lot.  Think of the downstream consumers who aren't end
> users, e.g. Linux distro developers.  Some distros have strict requirements on
> the availability of the source, reproducibility of builds, and so on, along
> with stacks of tooling that are built on downloading tarballs from PyPI.
>
> 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 either deliberately or otherwise, will likely result in more out of date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.

But again, as we already covered, none of the draft peps encourage
sourceless uploads to PyPI: a big chunk of it is in fact largely about
enabling source uploads without requiring implementing an undocumented
changed-at-will interface.

-Rob


-- 
Robert Collins <rbtcollins at hpe.com>
Distinguished Technologist
HP Converged Cloud