[Python-Dev] Proposing PEP 386 for addition

[Tarek Ziadé]

Hello,

On behalf of the Distutils-SIG, I would like to propose PEP 386 for
inclusion in the sdtlib, and have a final discussion here on
Python-dev.

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0386

This PEP has been discussed for some time in Distutils-SIG, and we
agreed there that it's important to have it accepted for the future of
packaging because:

1/ it will offer interoperability for all Python package managers out
there. (namely: Distutils, Distribute, Setuptools, Pip, PyPM)
2/ it will provide a reference for OS packagers, so they can translate
automatically Python distributions versions in their own schemes.

Choosing a schema was quite controversial because every development
team have their own version scheme. But notice that it is not in the
scope of this PEP to come up with an universal versioning schema,
intended to support many or all existing versioning schemas. There
will always be competing grammars, either mandated by distro or
project policies or by historical reasons and we cannot expect that to
change.

The goal of this PEP is rather to provide a standard reference schema
that is able to express the usual versioning semantics, so it's
possible to parse any alternative versioning schema and transform it
into a compliant one. This is how OS packagers usually deal with the
existing version schemas and is a preferable alternative than
supporting an arbitrary set of versioning schemas.

I believe that the current situation is as close to consensus as we
will get on distutils-sig, and in the interests of avoiding months of
further discussion which won't take things any further, I propose to
allow final comments from python-dev and then look for a final
decision.

Regards
Tarek

-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org | オープンソースはすごい! | 开源传万世，因有你参与