[Python-Dev] Status of packaging in 3.3

[Paul Moore]

On 20 June 2012 14:16, Alexis Métaireau <alexis at notmyidea.org> wrote:
> On 20/06/2012 13:31, Tarek Ziadé wrote:
>>
>> packaging.metadata is the implementation of all metadata versions.
>> standalone too.
>>
>> packaging.pypi is the PyPI crawler, and has fairly advanced features. I
>> defer to Alexis to tell us
>> is it's completely stable
>
>
> packaging.pypi is functionally working but IMO the API can (and probably
> should) be improved (we really lack feedback to know that).

I wasn't aware of this - I've had a look and my first thought is that
the documentation needs completing. At the moment, there's a lot that
isn't documented, and we should avoid getting into the same situation
as with distutils where people have to use undocumented APIs to get
anything done. There are a lot of examples, but not so much formal API
documentation.

I don't mean to pick on this one module - unless things have changed a
lot, the same is probably true of much of the rest of packaging. Lack
of documentation is the #1 criticism I've seen.

Are there people willing to do some serious documentation work to get
the docs for the "agreed stable" parts of packaging complete? There's
more time to do this (doc changes don't have to be done before the
beta), but by deciding to retain parts of packaging, we *are* making a
commitment to complete that documentation, in my view.

Paul.

PS packaging.pypi is nice - I wish I'd known of its existence for a
bit of work I was doing a little while ago...