python-peps/pep-0241.txt

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PEP: 241
Title: Metadata for Python Software Packages
Version: $Revision$
Author: A.M. Kuchling <amk1@bigfoot.com>
Type: Standards Track
Created: 12-Mar-2001
Status: Draft
Post-History:
Introduction
This PEP specifies the names and semantics of the fields used to store
metadata about Python software packages.
Including Metadata in Packages
The Distutils 'sdist' command will be modified to extract the
metadata fields from the arguments and write them to a file in the
generated zipfile or tarball. This file will be named PKG-INFO
and will be placed in the top directory of the source
distribution (where the README, INSTALL, and other files usually
go).
Developers may not provide their own "PKG-INFO" file. The "sdist"
command will, if it detects an existing "PKG-INFO" file, terminate
with an appropriate error message. This should prevent confusion
caused by the "PKG-INFO" and "setup.py" files being out of sync.
The PKG-INFO file format is a single set of RFC-822 headers
parseable by the rfc822.py module. The field names listed in the
following section are used as the header names. There's no
extension mechanism in this simple format; the Catalog and Distutils
SIGs will aim at getting a more flexible format ready for Python 2.2.
Fields
This section specifies the names and semantics of each of the
supported metadata fields.
Metadata-Version
Version of the file format; currently "1.0" is the only
legal value here.
Example: '1.0'
Name
The name of the package.
Example: 'BeagleVote'
Version
A string containing the package's version number. This
field should be parseable by one of the Version classes
(StrictVersion or LooseVersion) in the distutils.version
module.
Example: '1.0a2'
Platforms
A (XXX whitespace? comma?)-separated list of platform
specifications. Platform specifications are limited to the
following list:
XXX copy list from PPD? SourceForge?
Example: 'XXX'
Summary
A one-line summary of what the package does.
Example: "A module for collecting votes from beagles."
Description (optional)
A longer description of the package that can run to several
paragraphs. (Software that deals with metadata should not
assume any maximum size for this field, though one hopes that
people won't include their instruction manual as the
long-description.)
Example: 'This module collects votes from beagles in order to
determine their electoral wishes. Do NOT try to use this module
with basset hounds; it makes them grumpy.'
Keywords
A list of additional keywords to be used to assist searching
for this package in a larger catalog.
Example: 'dog puppy voting election'
Home-page (optional)
A string containing the URL for the package's home page.
Example: 'http://www.example.com/~cschultz/bvote/'
Author (optional)
A string containing at a minimum the author's name. Contact
information can also be added, separating each line with
newlines.
Example: 'C. Schultz\nUniversal Features Syndicate\nLos Angeles, CA'
Author-email
A string containing the author's e-mail address. It can contain
a name and e-mail address in the legal forms for a RFC-822
'From:' header. It's not optional because cataloging systems
can use the e-mail portion of this field as a unique key
representing the author. A catalog might provide authors the
ability to store their GPG key, personal home page, and other
additional metadata *about the author*, and optionally the
ability to associate several e-mail addresses with the same
person. Author-related metadata fields are not covered by this
PEP.
Example: '"C. Schultz" <cschultz@example.com>'
License
A string selected from a short list of choices, specifying the
license covering the package. Some licenses result in the
software being freely redistributable, so packagers and
resellers can automatically know that they're free to
redistribute the software. Other licenses will require
a careful reading by a human to determine the software can be
repackaged and resold.
The choices are:
Artistic, BSD, DFSG, GNU PL, Lesser GNU PL, "MIT/X11",
Mozilla PL, "public domain", Python, Qt PL, Zope PL, unknown,
nocommercial, nosell, nosource, shareware, other
The definitions are:
Python Python 1.6 or higher license. Version 1.5.2 and
earlier are under the MIT/X11 license.
public domain Software is public domain, not copyrighted.
unknown Status is not known
nocommercial Free private use but commercial use not permitted
nosell Free use but distribution for profit by arrangement
nosource Freely distributable but no source code
shareware Payment is requested if software is used
other General category for other non-DFSG licenses
Some of these licenses can be interpreted to mean the software is
freely redistributable. The list of redistributable licenses is:
Artistic, BSD, DFSG, GNU PL, Lesser GNU PL, "MIT/X11",
Mozilla PL, "public domain", Python, Qt PL, Zope PL,
nosource, shareware
Note that being redistributable does not mean a package
qualifies as free software, 'nosource' and 'shareware' being
examples.
Copyright
This document has been placed in the public domain.
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