[Distutils] on integrated docs in Warehouse and PyPI

[Paul Moore]

On 4 June 2016 at 14:54, Wayne Werner <waynejwerner at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 8:33 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> How do you propose to implement and support this hypothetical doc service,
>> given PyPI's resource constraints? Who's going to implement and maintain it?
>> What other features are you suggesting be de-prioritized so that people can
>> focus on this instead? Opportunity cost is a real cost.
>
> Would it be worthwhile to write up a PEP specifying some kind of
> documentation API?
>
> Having something well-specified would allow a motivated non-core-Warehouse
> dev to implement the details and (assuming it's as uncomplicated as I
> imagine) just create a PR. I assume it wouldn't really need much in the way
> of maintenance. But it would also give the RTD folks (and others?) the
> ability to implement their own tools for generating/hosting the docs.

Possibly it would be useful to write a PEP, I don't know. But even
that effort needs to come from someone willing to invest the time into
the work. Maybe Jason is interested in doing this, I don't know.

Ultimately, I don't think there's any benefit in debating how a
motivated individual should take this forward - better to leave the
decisions to whoever that may be. The fundamental point is that nobody
currently working on the packaging infrastructure (which mostly means
"Donald"...) has sufficient time to pick this up, but that doesn't
mean that someone else couldn't - just don't expect any huge amount of
assistance from the existing team.

Paul