[Distutils] moving things forward (was: wheel including files it shouldn't)

[Robert Collins]

On 4 May 2016 at 05:10, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

> Nick - do you have the time to pick this up? Or does it need someone
> to step up as BDFL-delegate? Robert, Nathaniel, do you have time to
> spend on a final round of discussion on this, on the assumption that
> the goal will be a final decision at the end of it? Donald, do you
> have the time and interest to complete and publish your proposal?

I'm currently going through a redundancy process @ HPE - while I
remain convinced that sorting out the issues with packaging is crucial
for Python going forward, my time to work on it is now rather more
limited than it was. I'm not sure where I'm going to end up, nor how
much work time I'll have for this going forward: it may end up being a
personal-time-only thing. Planning wise, we have to work on 'personal
time only' going forward - which means I"m going to be very careful
about biting off more than I can chew :)

Right now, I don't see any point updating the PEP at this point.

The edits I'd expect to make if the conclusions I suggested in
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2016-March/028437.html
are adopted are:

 - change to a Python API
 - BFDL call on the file format and name

There is no need to issue a new sdist thing, because sdists today are
*already* documented across PEPs 241, 314 and 345.

So - if Nick is ready to rule, there is basically about an hour of
editing to switch the CLI to a Python API and update the file format
bits, and then we can call it provisional and encourage
implementations, update the thunk implementation and so on.

If there's more debate to be had, thats fine too, but editing the PEP
won't achieve that.

-Rob