python-peps/pep-0314.txt

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PEP: 314
Title: Metadata for Python Software Packages v1.1
Version: $Revision$
Author: A.M. Kuchling <amk@amk.ca>
Type: Standards Track
Created: 12-Apr-2003
Status: Draft
Post-History:
Introduction
This PEP describes a mechanism for adding metadata to Python
packages. It includes specifics of the field names, and their
semantics and usage.
This document specifies version 1.1 of the metadata format.
Version 1.0 is specified in PEP 241.
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.
Fields marked with "(Multiple use)" may be specified multiple
times in a single PKG-INFO file. Other fields may only occur
once in a PKG-INFO file. Fields marked with "(optional)" are
not required to appear in a valid PKG-INFO file, all other
fields must be present.
Metadata-Version
Version of the file format; currently "1.0" and "1.1" are the
only legal values here.
Example:
Metadata-Version: 1.1
Name
The name of the package.
Example:
Name: 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:
Version: 1.0a2
Platform (multiple use)
A comma-separated list of platform specifications, summarizing
the operating systems supported by the package. The major
supported platforms are listed below, but this list is
necessarily incomplete.
POSIX, MacOS, Windows, BeOS, PalmOS.
Binary distributions will use the Supported-Platform field in
their metadata to specify the OS and CPU for which the binary
package was compiled. The semantics of the Supported-Platform
are not specified in this PEP.
Example:
Platform: POSIX, Windows
Summary
A one-line summary of what the package does.
Example:
Summary: 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:
Description: 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 (optional)
A list of additional keywords to be used to assist searching
for the package in a larger catalog.
Example:
Keywords: dog puppy voting election
Home-page (optional)
A string containing the URL for the package's home page.
Example:
Home-page: 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:
Author: C. Schultz
Universal Features Syndicate
Los 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:
Author-email: "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 how the software can be
repackaged and resold.
The choices are:
Artistic, BSD, DFSG, GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, "MIT",
Mozilla PL, "public domain", Python, Qt PL, Zope PL, unknown,
nocommercial, nosell, nosource, shareware, other
Definitions of some of the licenses are:
DFSG The license conforms to the Debian Free Software
Guidelines, but does not use one of the other
DFSG conforming licenses listed here.
More information is available at:
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
Python Python 1.6 or higher license. Version 1.5.2 and
earlier are under the MIT 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 GPL, GNU LGPL, "MIT",
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.
Example:
License: MIT
Requires (multiple use)
Each entry contains a string describing some other component or
module required by this package.
The format of a requirement string is simple: an arbitrary
sequence of characters, optionally followed by a version
declaration within parentheses. Leading and trailing whitespace
are ignored, and whitespace within the string is normalized to a
single space.
A version declaration is a series of conditional operators and
version numbers, separated by commas. Conditional operators
must be one of "<", ">", "<=", ">=", "=", and "!=". Version
numbers must be in the format accepted by the
distutils.version.StrictVersion class: two or three
dot-separated numeric components, with an optional "pre-release"
tag on the end consisting of the letter 'a' or 'b' followed by a
number. Example version numbers are "1.0", "2.3a2", "1.3.99",
XXX Do we really need = and !=?
XXX Should it be == or =?
XXX Should we support LooseVersion instead of StrictVersion?
LooseVersions aren't comparable...
Any number of conditional operators can be specified, e.g.
">1.0, !=1.3.4, <2.0".
All of the following are possible requirement strings: "rfc822",
"", "zlib (>=1.1.4)", "XML parser".
There's no canonical list of what strings should be used; the
Python community is left to choose its own standards.
Example:
Requires: re
Requires: sys
Requires: zlib
Requires: pyexpat (>1.0)
Requires: DB-API 2.0 module
Provides (multiple use)
Each entry contains a string describing a component or
module that will be provided by this package once it is
installed. These strings should match the ones used in
Requirements fields. Version declarations cannot be supplied;
instead the package's version number will be used.
Example:
Provides: xml
Provides: xml.utils
Provides: xml.utils.iso8601
Provides: xml.dom
Obsoletes (multiple use)
Each entry contains a string describing a component or module
that this package renders obsolete, meaning that the two packages
should not be installed at the same time. Version declarations
cannot be supplied. (XXX Or are they needed for Obsoletes?)
The most common use of this field will be in case a package name
changes, e.g. Gorgon 2.3 gets subsumed into Torqued Python 1.0.
When you install Torqued Python, the Gorgon package should be
removed.
Example:
Obsoletes: Gorgon
Conflicts (multiple use)
Each entry contains a string describing a component or module
that conflicts with this package, meaning that the two packages
should not be installed at the same time. Version declarations
cannot be supplied.
Conflict resolution probably isn't very important for Python
programs, because few extensions will cause problems for other
extensions, unless they're using the same package name. This
field name is being defined here for future use.
Conflicts: Gorgon
Acknowledgements
None yet.
Copyright
This document has been placed in the public domain.
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