[Distutils] distlib updated with "locators" API

[Vinay Sajip]

Daniel Holth <dholth <at> gmail.com> writes:

> When you are using setuptools, setup.py can be used to generate
> declarative metadata with the command "python setup.py egg_info". You
> can add --egg-base <dir> to put the static metadata in a different
> directory. Setuptools even makes it easy to add new metadata files to
> the .egg-info folder by using a plugin to write each file. The
> majority of the sdists on pypi contain pre-built versions of this
> static metadata in .egg-info folders.

Can it be correctly said that all of the metadata passed to setup() is in
.egg-info? How far can we rely on the accuracy of the content of .egg-info
dirs in sdists on PyPI? I have found hundreds of projects where even basic
metadata is missing or incorrect - for example, the version.

> Unfortunately setup.py is used to build not one, but many different
> dists (the most common difference of course being different
> requirements) depending on any number of factors, so pip rebuilds the
> static metadata before using it. Metadata 1.2+ of course allow us to
> put the most common "reasons for different dependencies" conditions in
> the static metadata itself.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help with nearly all the stuff currently on PyPI.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip