[Python-Dev] Keyword meanings [was: Accept just PEP-0426]

[Nick Coghlan]

On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 3:47 PM, PJ Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:

> In effect, a "conflicts" field actually *creates* conflicts and
> maintenance burdens where they did not previously exist, because even
> after the conflict no longer really existed, an automated tool would
> have prevented PyDispatch from being installed, or, per your
> suggestion above, unnecessarily *uninstalled* it after a user
> installed RuleDispatch.
>

That's not what a Conflicts field is for. It's to allow a project to say
*they don't support* installing in parallel with another package. It
doesn't matter why it's unsupported, it's making a conflict perceived by
the project explicit in their metadata.

Such a field is designed to convey information to users about *supported*
configurations, regardless of whether or not they happen to work for a
given use case. If a user believes a declared conflict is in error, and
having the two installed in parallel is important to them, they can:
1. Use virtual environments to keep the two projects isolated from each
other
2. Use an installer that ignores Conflicts information (which will be all
of them, since that's the status quo)
3. Make their case to the upstream project that the conflict has been
resolved, and installing the two in parallel no longer causes issues

Cheers,
Nick.

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