[Python-Dev] Status of packaging in 3.3

[Tarek Ziadé]

On 6/22/12 9:11 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Tarek Ziadé<tarek at ziade.org>  wrote:
>> On 6/22/12 7:05 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> I don't understand what's the problem is with ini-style files, as they are
>> suitable for multi-line variables etc. (see zc.buildout)
>>
>> yaml vs ini vs xxx seems to be an implementation detail, and my take on this
>> is that we have ConfigParser in the stdlib
> You can't do more than one layer of nested data structures cleanly
> with an ini-style solution, and some aspects of packaging are just
> crying out for metadata that nests more deeply than that. The
> setup.cfg format for specifying installation layouts doesn't even come
> *close* to being intuitively readable - using a format with better
> nesting support has some hope of fixing that, since filesystem layouts
> are naturally hierarchical.
>
> A JSON based format would also be acceptable to me from a functional
> point of view, although in that case, asking people to edit it
> directly would be cruel - you would want to transform it to YAML in
> order to actually read it or write it.

I still think this is an implementation detail, and that ini can work here,
as they have proven to work with buildout and look very clean to me.

But I guess that's not important -- looking forward for you changes 
proposals on packaging.

I am now wondering why we don't have a yaml module in the stdlib btw :)

>
> Cheers,
> Nick.
>