[Distutils] distlib and wheel metadata

[Paul Moore]

On 23 February 2017 at 12:32, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>   component: a library or framework used to build Python applications. Users
> will mainly interact with the component via a Python API. Examples:
> requests, numpy, pytz

Sorry to nitpick, but why is "component" better than "library"? People
typically understand that "library" includes "framework" in this
context. OTOH someone who's written a new library won't necessarily
know that in this context (and *only* this context) we want them to
describe it as a "component". (As far as I know, we don't use the term
"component" anywhere else in the Python ecosystem currently). This
feels to me somewhat like the failed attempts to force a distinction
between "package" and "distribution". In the end, people use the terms
they are comfortable with, and work with a certain level of
context-dependent ambiguity.

Of course, if the goal here is to raise the barrier for entry to PyPI
by expecting people to have to understand this type of concept and the
implications before uploading, then that's fair. It's not something I
think we should be aiming for personally, but I can see that
organisations who want to be able to rely on the quality of what's
available on PyPI would be in favour of a certain level of
self-selection being applied. Personally I view PyPI as more of a
public resource, like github, where it's up to the consumer to assess
quality - so to me this is a change of focus. But YMMV.

Paul