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PEP: 438
Title: Transitioning to release-file hosting on PyPI
Version: $Revision$
Last-Modified: $Date$
Author: Holger Krekel <holger@merlinux.eu>, Carl Meyer <carl@oddbird.net>
Discussions-To: catalog-sig@python.org
Status: Draft
Type: Process
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 15-Mar-2013
Post-History:
Abstract
========
This PEP proposes a backward-compatible two-phase transition process
to speed up, simplify and robustify installing from the
pypi.python.org (PyPI) package index. To ease the transition and
minimize client-side friction, **no changes to distutils or existing
installation tools are required in order to benefit from the first
transition phase, which will result in faster, more reliable installs
for most existing packages**.
The first transition phase implements an easy and explicit means for a
package maintainer to control which release file links are served to
present-day installation tools. The first phase also includes the
implementation of analysis tools for present-day packages, to support
communication with package maintainers and the automated setting of
default modes for controlling release file links. The first phase
also will default newly-registered projects on PyPI to only serve
links to release files which were uploaded to PyPI.
The second transition phase concerns end-user installation tools,
which shall default to only install release files that are hosted on
PyPI and tell the user if external release files exist, offering a
choice to automatically use those external files.
Rationale
=========
.. _history:
History and motivations for external hosting
--------------------------------------------
When PyPI went online, it offered release registration but had no
facility to host release files itself. When hosting was added, no
automated downloading tool existed yet. When Philip Eby implemented
automated downloading (through setuptools), he made the choice to
allow people to use download hosts of their choice. The finding of
externally-hosted packages was implemented as follows:
#. The PyPI ``simple/`` index for a package contains all links found
by scraping them from that package's long_description metadata for
any release. Links in the "Download-URL" and "Home-page" metadata
fields are given ``rel=download`` and ``rel=homepage`` attributes,
respectively.
#. Any of these links whose target is a file whose name appears to be
in the form of an installable source or binary distribution, with
name in the form "packagename-version.ARCHIVEEXT", is considered a
potential installation candidate by installation tools.
#. Similarly, any links suffixed with an "#egg=packagename-version"
fragment are considered an installation candidate.
#. Additionally, the ``rel=homepage`` and ``rel=download`` links are
crawled by installation tools and, if HTML, are themselves scraped
for release-file links in the above formats.
Today, most packages released on PyPI host their release files on
PyPI, but a small percentage (XXX need updated data) rely on external
hosting.
There are many reasons [2]_ why people have chosen external
hosting. To cite just a few:
- release processes and scripts have been developed already and upload
to external sites
- it takes too long to upload large files from some places in the
world
- export restrictions e.g. for crypto-related software
- company policies which require offering open source packages through
own sites
- problems with integrating uploading to PyPI into one's release
process (because of release policies)
- desiring download statistics different from those maintained by PyPI
- perceived bad reliability of PyPI
- not aware that PyPI offers file-hosting
Irrespective of the present-day validity of these reasons, there
clearly is a history why people choose to host files externally and it
even was for some time the only way you could do things. This PEP
takes the position that there are at least some valid reasons for
external hosting.
Problem
-------
**Today, python package installers (pip, easy_install, buildout, and
others) often need to query many non-PyPI URLs even if there are no
externally hosted files**. Apart from querying pypi.python.org's
simple index pages, also all homepages and download pages ever
specified with any release of a package are crawled by an installer.
The need for installers to crawl external sites slows down
installation and makes for a brittle and unreliable installation
process. Those sites and packages also don't take part in the
:pep:`381` mirroring infrastructure, further decreasing reliability
and speed of automated installation processes around the world.
Most packages are hosted directly on pypi.python.org [1]_. Even for
these packages, installers still crawl their homepage and
download-url, if specified. Many package uploaders are not aware that
specifying the "homepage" or "download-url" in their package metadata
will needlessly slow down the installation process for all users.
Relying on third party sites also opens up more attack vectors for
injecting malicious packages into sites using automated installs. A
simple attack might just involve getting hold of an old now-unused
homepage domain and placing malicious packages there. Moreover,
performing a Man-in-The-Middle (MITM) attack between an installation
site and any of the download sites can inject malicious packages on
the installation site. As many homepages and download locations are
using HTTP and not HTTPS, such attacks are not hard to launch. Such
MITM attacks can easily happen even for packages which never intended
to host files externally as their homepages are contacted by
installers anyway.
There is currently no way for package maintainers to avoid
external-link crawling, other than removing all homepage/download url
metadata for all historic releases. While a script [3]_ has been
written to perform this action, it is not a good general solution
because it removes useful metadata from PyPI releases.
Even if the sites referenced by "Homepage" and "Download-URL" links
were not scraped for further links, there is no obvious way under the
current system for a package owner to link to an installable file from
a long_description metadata field (which is shown as package
documentation on ``/pypi/PKG``) without installation tools
automatically considering that file a candidate for installation.
Conversely, there is no way to explicitly register multiple external
release files without putting them in metadata fields.
Goals
-----
These are the goals to be achieved by implementation of this PEP:
* Package owners should be able to explicitly control which files are
presented by PyPI to installer tools as installation
candidates. Installation should not be slowed and made less reliable
by extensive and unnecessary crawling of links that package owners
did not explicitly nominate as installation files.
* It should remain possible for package owners to choose to host their
release files on their own hosting, external to PyPI. It should be
easy for a user to request the installation of such releases using
automated installer tools.
* Automated installer tools should not install externally-hosted
packages **by default**, but only when explicitly authorized to do
so by the user. When tools refuse to install such a package by
default, they should tell the user exactly which external link(s)
they would need to follow, and what option(s) the user can provide
to authorize the tool to follow those links. PyPI should provide all
necessary metadata for installer tools to implement this easily and
within a single request/reply interaction.
* Migration from the status quo to the above points should be gradual
and minimize breakage. This includes tooling that makes it easy for
package owners with an existing release process that uploads to
non-PyPI hosting to also upload those release files to PyPI.
Solution / two transition phases
================================
The first transition phase introduces a "hosting-mode" field for each
project on PyPI, allowing package owners explicit control of which
release file links are served to present-day installation tools in the
machine-readable ``simple/`` index. The first transition will, after
successful hosting-mode manipulations by individual early-adopters,
set a default hosting mode for existing packages, based on automated
analysis. **Maintainers will be notified one month ahead of any such
automated change**. At completion of the first transition phase,
**all present-day existing release and installation processes and
tools are expected to continue working**. Any remaining errors or
problems are expected to only relate to installation of individual
packages and can be easily corrected by package maintainers or PyPI
admins if maintainers are not reachable.
Also in the first phase, each link served in the ``simple/`` index
will be explicitly marked as ``rel="internal"`` (hosted by the index
itself) or ``rel="external"`` (linking to an external site that is not
part of the index).
In the second transition phase, PyPI client installation tools shall
be updated to default to only install ``rel="internal"`` packages
unless a user specifies option(s) to permit installing from external
links.
Maintainers of packages which currently host release files on non-PyPI
sites shall receive instructions and tools to ease "re-hosting" of
their historic and future package release files. This re-hosting tool
MUST be available before automated hosting-mode changes are announced
to package maintainers.
Implementation
==============
Hosting modes
-------------
The foundation of the first transition phase is the introduction of
three "modes" of PyPI hosting for a package, affecting which links are
generated for the ``simple/`` index. These modes are implemented
without requiring changes to installation tools via changes to the
algorithm for generating the machine-readable ``simple/`` index.
The modes are:
- ``pypi-scrape-crawl``: no change from the current situation of
generating machine-readable links for installation tools, as
outlined in the history_.
- ``pypi-scrape``: for a package in this mode, links to be added to
the ``simple/`` index are still scraped from package
metadata. However, the "Home-page" and "Download-url" links are
given ``rel=ext-homepage`` and ``rel=ext-download`` attributes
instead of ``rel=homepage`` and ``rel=download``. The effect of this
(with no change in installation tools necessary) is that these links
will not be followed and scraped for further candidate links by
present-day installation tools: only installable files directly
hosted from PyPI or linked directly from PyPI metadata will be
considered for installation. Installation tools MAY evolve to offer
an option to use the new rel-attribution to crawl external pages but
MUST NOT default to it.
- ``pypi-explicit``: for a package in this mode, only links to release
files uploaded to PyPI, and external links to release files
explicitly nominated by the package owner (via a new interface
exposed by PyPI) will be added to the ``simple/`` index.
Thus the hope is that eventually all projects on PyPI can be migrated
to the ``pypi-explicit`` mode, while preserving the ability to install
release files hosted externally via installer tools. Deprecation of
hosting modes to eventually only allow the ``pypi-explicit`` mode is
NOT REGULATED by this PEP but is expected to become feasible some time
after successful implementation of the transition phases described in
this PEP. It is expected that deprecation requires **a new process to
deal with abandoned packages** because of unreachable maintainers for
still popular packages.
First transition phase (PyPI)
-----------------------------
The proposed solution consists of multiple implementation and
communication steps:
#. Implement in PyPI the three modes described above, with an
interface for package owners to select the mode for each package
and register explicit external file URLs.
#. For packages in all modes, label all links in the ``simple/`` index
with ``rel="internal"`` or ``rel="external"``, to make it easier
for client tools to distinguish the types of links in the second
transition phase.
#. Default all newly-registered packages to ``pypi-explicit`` mode
(package owners can still switch to the other modes as desired).
#. Determine (via an automated analysis tool) which packages have all
installable files available on PyPI itself (group A), which have
all installable files linked directly from PyPI metadata (group B),
and which have installable versions available that are linked only
from external homepage/download HTML pages (group C).
#. Send mail to maintainers of projects in group A that their project
will be automatically configured to ``pypi-explicit`` mode in one
month, and similarly to maintainers of projects in group B that
their project will be automatically configured to ``pypi-scrape``
mode. Inform them that this change is not expected to affect
installability of their project at all, but will result in faster
and safer installs for their users. Encourage them to set this
mode themselves sooner to benefit their users.
#. Send mail to maintainers of packages in group C that their package
hosting mode is ``pypi-scrape-crawl``, list the URLs which
currently are crawled, and suggest that they either re-host their
packages directly on PyPI and switch to ``pypi-explicit``, or at
least provide direct links to release files in PyPI metadata and
switch to ``pypi-scrape``. Provide instructions and tools to help
with these transitions.
Second transition phase (installer tools)
-----------------------------------------
For the second transition phase, maintainers of installation tools are
asked to release two updates.
The first update shall provide clear warnings if externally-hosted
release files (that is, files whose link is ``rel="external"``) are
selected for download, for which projects and URLs exactly this
happens, and warn that in future versions externally-hosted downloads
will be disabled by default.
The second update should change the default mode to allow only
installation of ``rel="internal"`` package files, and allow
installation of externally-hosted packages only when the user supplies
an option (ideally an option specifying exactly which external domains
are to be trusted as download sources). When download of an
externally-hosted package is disallowed, the user should be notified,
with instructions for how to make the install succeed and warnings
about the implication (that a file will be downloaded from a site that
is not part of the package index).
Open Questions / tasks
======================
- Should we introduce some form of PyPI API versioning in this PEP?
(it might complicate matters and delay the implementation but is
often seen as good practise).
- Do another round of discussions with installation tool authors and
see about incorporating their feedback. There is one known issue in
particular from Philip J. Eby who considers a host-based pattern
matching algorithm preferable to interpreting "rel" attributes.
References
==========
.. [1] Donald Stufft, ratio of externally hosted versus pypi-hosted,
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/catalog-sig/2013-March/005549.html
(XXX need to update this data for all easy_install-supported formats)
.. [2] Marc-Andre Lemburg, reasons for external hosting,
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/catalog-sig/2013-March/005626.html
.. [3] Holger Krekel, script to remove homepage/download metadata for
all releases
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/catalog-sig/2013-February/005423.html
Acknowledgments
===============
Philip Eby for precise information and the basic ideas to implement
the transition via server-side changes only.
Donald Stufft for pushing away from external hosting and offering to
implement both a Pull Request for the necessary PyPI changes and the
analysis tool to drive the transition phase 1.
Marc-Andre Lemburg, Nick Coghlan and catalog-sig in general for
thinking through issues regarding getting rid of "external hosting".
Copyright
=========
This document has been placed in the public domain.
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