[Python-Dev] Edits to Metadata 1.2 to add extras (optional dependencies)

[Donald Stufft]

On Tuesday, August 28, 2012 at 8:28 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> 
> Agreed, and this is the kind of thing a v1.3 metadata PEP could
> define. It just needs to be properly namespaced, and the obvious
> namespacing mechanism is PyPI project names.

The biggest reason I have against namespacing them is it makes
moving from experimental to standard easier, but I'm ok with some
form of a namespace. The biggest reason I see against using PyPI
names as the namespace is it needlessly ties a piece of data to
the original creator. Similar to how right now you could write a
less hacky setuptools, but in order to do so you need to continue
to use the setuptools package name (see distribute). Using PyPI
names means that in the requires-dist example it would be something
like setuptools-requires-dist, and even if I make my own tool that
supports the same concept as setuptools's requires-dist I would
need to use setuptools-requires-dist.

The concept of metadata I think should be divorced from specific
implementations. Obviously there are going to be some implementation
specific issues but I think it's much cleaner to have a x-requires-dist
that any implementation can use than to have whoever-invented-it-first-requires-dist
or a twenty-different-forms-of-requires-dist.

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