On 3 October 2014 22:02, Donald Stufft <[email protected]> wrote: > > As far as simplication goes, I don't believe it simplifies the implementation > of PyPI at all, it just shuffles things around and creates work on my part > in order to get PyPI supporting the new stuff. It does however let installers > become simpler and it enables installers to present accurate error information > that actually helps determine the root cause of a failure instead of the > current silent failure with a confusing error message model. > > I look forward to your suggestions, but I'm not hopeful. I've been thus far > unable to determine a way to improve the current solution in a way that isn't > just papering over one problem without solving the fundamental issue.
Donald's perspective here matches my own. I'll be interested to hear alternative proposals, but they should aim to address at least the following user experience expectations: 1. Easily allow external hosting to "just work" when appropriately configured at the system, user or virtual environment level (pip already supports this at the user level, and will support it at the system and environment level in the next version). 2. Easily allow package authors to tell PyPI "my releases are hosted <here>" and have that advertised in such a way that tools can clearly communicate it to users, without silently introducing unexpected dependencies on third party services. 3. Eliminate any and all references to the confusing "verifiable external" and "unverifiable external" distinction from the user experience (both when installing and when releasing packages). 4. The repository aspects of PyPI should become *just* the default package hosting location (i.e. the only one that is treated as opt-out rather than opt-in by most client tools in their default configuration). Aside from that aspect, hosting on PyPI should not otherwise provide an enhanced user experience over hosting your own package repository. 5. Do all of the above while providing default behaviour that is secure against most attackers below the nation state adversary level. In my view, the most debatable part of Donald's latest proposal would be the handling of projects that don't get updated to properly register an external URL before the link spidering support is removed from the client applications. That aspect should arguably include a step where the decision on whether or not to disable that support is based on *looking at the numbers again* before turning the feature off on the server, and perhaps also monitoring for user complaints for a period after it is first turned off, before the feature is removed from the clients. Regards, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | [email protected] | Brisbane, Australia _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
