[Distutils] moving things forward (was: wheel including files it shouldn't)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 4 May 2016 at 16:03, Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
> The edits I'd expect to make if the conclusions I suggested in
> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2016-March/028437.html
> are adopted are:
>
>  - change to a Python API
>  - BFDL call on the file format and name
>
> There is no need to issue a new sdist thing, because sdists today are
> *already* documented across PEPs 241, 314 and 345.

I already +1'ed using a Python API, but on the file name & format
side, we have the following candidates and prior art floating around:

pypa.json in PEP 516
pypackage.json in PEP 517
pydist.json in PEP 426
METADATA (Key: Value) in sdists and wheels
WHEEL (Key: Value) in wheels

My impression is that we're generally agreed on wanting to move from
Key:Value to JSON as the baseline for interoperability formats, so my
suggestion is to use the name "pybuild.json".

The problem I have with pypa/pypackage/pydist is that they're all too
broad - we're moving towards an explicitly multi-stage pipeline (tree
-> sdist -> wheel -> installed) and additional metadata gets added at
each step. The "pybuild.json" metadata specifically covers how to get
from a source tree or sdist to a built wheel file, so I think it makes
sense to use a name that reflects that.

Cheers,
Nick.

P.S. If you search for "pybuild", there *are* some existing utilities
out there by that name, including a package builder for Debian. If you
search for "pybuild.json" instead, then the 3rd-ranked link, at least
for me, is Antoine Pitrou's original suggestion of that name back in
November.

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