[Import-SIG] PEP 402: specification questions

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Actually, scratch that part of my response. *Existing* namespace
> packages that work properly already have a single owner

How so? The zope package certainly doesn't have a single owner. Instead,
it's spread over a large number of subpackages.

> With PEP 402, those owning packages are the only ones that would have
> to change.

No. In setuptools namespace packages, each portion of the namespace
(i.e. each distribution) will have it's own __init__.py; which of them
gets actually used is arbitrary but also irrelevant since they all look
the same.

So "only those" is actually "all of them".

> With PEP 382, all the *other* distro packages have to
> change as well

What's a "distro package"? Which are the other ones?

They don't need to change at all. The existing setuptools namespace
mechanism will continue to work, and you can add PEP 382 package
portions freely.

> It seems I now remember at least some of the reasons why we didn't
> like the "directory extension" idea the first time it was suggested :)

Please elaborate - I missed your point.

Regards,
Martin