[Python-Dev] PEP 441 - Improving Python ZIP Application Support

[Paul Moore]

On 15 February 2015 at 05:33, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd definitely prefer a simple procedural API like that over offering
> a public stateful object-oriented API, as the latter significantly
> increases testing complexity without offering a sufficiently
> compelling gain in expressiveness to justify the additional upfront
> test development cost and the ongoing maintenance and support burden.

The main advantage of a class API is the ability to support building
an archive from data in memory (or by collecting parts from different
areas on the filesystem). That's something I've had a use for on a
number of occasions.

OTOH, if the pyz/pyzw extensions are already (or will be) registered
by the installer then the only remaining feature of this PEP [1] is
the archive creation app. And designing that as we go is probably the
wrong way to get something in the stdlib. Maybe it would be better to
put something on PyPI and let it develop outside the stdlib first?
There's already at least pyzaa and pyzzer available...

Paul

[1] Apart from the benefit of publicising executable zip files as a
means of deploying Python code by mentioning them in a "What's new"
section :-)