[Python-Dev] some minor questions about pep8

[Nick Coghlan]

On 22 March 2015 at 07:46, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Mar 21, 2015, at 05:00 PM, Donald Stufft wrote:
>
>>I sort of think (though I haven’t completely convinced myself) that adding
>>something like __version__ to a package is a work around to the fact that
>>we don’t have an API that lets someone ask “what is the distribution and
>>version that this module/import-package came from”.
>
> I tend to agree.  Having that would solve one of the big problems that lead to
> PEP 394 thinking, that of having to update version numbers in more than one
> place.  ISTM the best place to do it is once in setup.py and let the metadata
> flow.  The only downside is for doing in-tree development without 'installing'
> the package (e.g. absence of venv, tox, or similar).

We don't *quite* track enough distribution metadata currently to
reliably build the reverse mapping from module names to the packages
that installed them. The draft "python.exports" extension in PEP 459
is supposed to provide that missing piece:
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0459/#the-python-exports-extension

Cheers,
Nick.

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