[Distutils] Proposal: "Install and save"

[Thomas Kluyver]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2016, at 02:32 PM, Alex Grönholm wrote:
> I'm -1 on this because requirements.txt is not really the standard way 
> to list dependencies.
> In the Python world, setup.py is the equivalent of Node's package.json. 
> But as it is
> Python code, it cannot so easily be programmatically modified.

Packaging based on declarative metadata:
http://flit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
</blowing_own_trumpet>

We have a bit of a divide. Specifying dependencies in setup.py (or
flit.ini, or upcoming pyproject.toml) is the standard for library and
tool packages that are intended to be published on PyPI and installed
with pip. requirements.txt is generally used for applications which will
be distributed or deployed by other means.

As I understand it, in the Javascript world package.json is used in both
cases. Is that something Python should try to emulate? Is it hard to
achieve given the limitations of setup.py that you pointed out?

Thomas