[Distutils] Changing the way we use the PEP process (redux)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 25 January 2016 at 13:30, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
> Will we start moving the actual specifications into packaging.python.org, or will they stay in the PEP repository? I’m not sure I can tell from your two PRs currently.

The initial PRs are aimed more at documenting the status quo, so the
current crop of specifications won't move, but may gain
packaging.python.org annotations explaining how reality differs from
the nominal description in the PEP (I already did this for the PEP 345
metadata spec, and to a lesser degree for the PEP 376 installation
database spec). I figure that's useful even if we *don't* change the
process, so it's a good place to start.

The next step would then be to create a new PR against pypa.io
proposing a change to the spec handling process to make it so that as
the various specs get updated they become self-contained reference
documents on packaging.python.org, with the PEPs being more focused on
making the case for the changes relative to the previous revision (or
for the addition of a new specification to the specification set when
that's what's happening).

I'm still not entirely sure what that PR is going to look like though,
which is why I decided to start with making the status quo easier to
follow, rather than jumping straight to the proposed change. (I may
also still use a PEP 376 update to trial run the process, since that
has a lot of "not actually implemented" bits and pieces that obscure
the main aspects of the dist-info directory and the RECORD metadata
file)

Cheers,
Nick.

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