[Distutils] Migrating interoperability specs to packaging.python.org

[Nick Coghlan]

On 4 September 2017 at 23:33, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, I'm also wondering if it may still be worthwhile writing a
> metadata 1.3 PEP that does the following things:
>
> 1. Explicitly notes the addition of the two new fields
> 2. Describes the process change for packaging interoperability specifications
> 3. Defines a canonical transformation between the human-readable
> key:value format and a more automation friendly JSON format

Discussing this idea further with Dustin, I now think it's conflating
two different activities (one related to process management, one
related to actually updating the metadata specification).

So I'd suggest that any metadata 1.3 PEP restrict itself to only
covering the first point (more formally documenting the two fields
added since metadata 1.2) and the last point (defining a standard
translation from the Key:Value format to JSON and back).

For the process management question around improving traceability in
our spec management processes, I'm wondering if it may make sense to
write a meta-PEP called just "The Python Packaging Authority" that
attempts to better articulate what that term actually encompasses:

* The published interoperability specifications at
https://packaging.python.org/specifications/
* The process for updating those specifications at
https://www.pypa.io/en/latest/specifications/
* Ecosystem & specification level design discussions on distutils-sig
* Funding and resource allocation authority delegated from the PSF
Board to the Python Packaging Working Group (overseen by the PSF's
Director of Operations & Infrastructure Manager)
* PyPI operating authority delegated from the PSF Board to the PSF
Infrastructure team (overseen by the PSF's Director of Operations &
Infrastructure Manager)

Such a meta-PEP could also clearly document the limits of Guido's
original design delegation back at the 2013 Python Language Summit
(i.e. as soon as we need or want to change anything in CPython or the
standard library, then that's a change that needs to go through the
regular PEP process, not the PyPA/distutils-sig specific variant of
it)

Cheers,
Nick.

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