[Catalog-sig] Make setuptools smarter?

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 07:54 AM 2/28/2008 +1100, Richard Jones wrote:
>On Thu, 28 Feb 2008, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> > One minor possible hurdle is that package_releases() doesn't list
> > *all* available versions, only the "unhidden" ones.  It might be nice
> > to have a separate API to request *all* versions.
>
>Done. package_relases now takes (package_name, show_hidden=False) - setting
>show_hidden to True will make it list all versions, hidden or not.
>
>
> > OTOH, I have to say that the availability of the new "simple" API
> > makes it a lot more tempting to just use that.  Because there, I can
> > make just *one* server round trip to get all the data I need,
> > assuming that the user has properly spelled and capitalized the
> > package name.  Whereas, with the XML-RPC API, it requires a minimum
> > of two calls.
>
>Unless we write a new call ... what_setuptools_needs(package_name) which does
>a search on the name, then case-insensitive if that fails and returns the egg
>URLs.

Or you could just make it so that release_urls() doesn't need a 
second argument, and if omitted, returns a dictionary of all 
versions' download information.  That would make it single-roundtrip 
in the case where somebody spells the name correctly and case-matched.

By the way, speaking of name matching, was there ever a decision 
reached about name canonicalization for PyPI?  (i.e., disallowing 
registration of packages that have identical names except for case or 
punctuation?)


> > (And of course, the "simple" API can be statically
> > mirrored, while XML-RPC cannot.)
>
>Yep.

Right - so I don't really see what the benefit of using the XML-RPC 
here is.  If the people who are maintaining PyPI really want that, I 
guess we could do it.  But ISTM that since the "simple" API is 
already officially supported and widely used/tested, scaling up the 
load on XML-RPC might actually be a bad idea, from a "keeping PyPI 
running" point of view.  And of course, it's another API.

Besides, aren't REST APIs all the rage these days, anyway?  XML-RPC 
is like, soooo 2003.  ;-)