[Python-Dev] The Breaking of distutils and PyPI for Python 3000?

Wed Mar 19 10:10:27 CET 2008

As I'm digging into packaging issues here at PyCon, a couple of Python 3000 
related matters occur to me. As I'm new to the Python 3000 development, if 
these have already been addressed in prior discussions, I apologize for your time.
1. What is the plan for PyPI when Python 3.0 comes out and
 dependencies start getting satisfied from distribution
 across the great divide, e.g. a 3.0-specific package
 pulls from PyPI a 2.x-specific package to meet some
 need? Are there plans to fork PyPI, apply special
 tags to uploads or what? While binary distributions
 are tagged with the Python version, source distributions
 are not. And of course a dependency expression as
 it stands today for "SomePackage > 2.4" may pull 3.0
 to satisfy it.
2. There have been attempts over the years to fix distutils,
 with the last one being in 2006 by Anthony Baxter. He
 stated that a major hurdle was the strong demand to
 respect backward compatibility and he finally gave up.
 One of the purposes of Python 3.0 was the freedom to
 break backward compatibility for the sake of "doing
 the right thing". So is it now permissible to give
 distutils a good reworking and stop letting
 compatibility issues hold us back?
-Jeff