That PR is OK without a PEP (as was established via the thread that it came from). What I was referring to was the more significant changes @konstin was suggesting. Specifically, in terms of the comment
IMO, a PEP would be needed to establish consensus on the “right” interpretation in cases like these. We might be able to get agreement via a simple discussion thread, but it’s notoriously difficult to be sure what was agreed on without someone writing it down explicitly (and that’s basically what a PEP is).
In practical terms I agree. This is a problem with the PEP process, unfortunately.
However in principle, the process necessary to get approval for a text clarification PR, when that PR will change interoperability rules, should be very similar. There’s still a need for discussion on DPO, which would require a clear description of the precise changes being proposed. What constitutes “approval” for a change to be PR-only isn’t clear in the process document, but in practice it’s always been a combination of community consensus and PEP-delegate approval.
Maybe the process could be improved. The SC is already looking at the PEP process, and I hope the Packaging Council will look at the standards process. But those are long-term changes, and in the meantime I view my role as that of a caretaker for the existing process - doing my best to make it as painless as possible while making sure it’s followed properly.
In this particular case, my concern with a PR-based approach is that it’s very easy, once approval for semantic changes has been given, for the PR to suffer from “scope creep”, making more changes than were covered in the discussion, and hence exceeding the authority given. A clear description of the precise changes to be made avoids that - and once you have that plus community consensus, you’re most of the way to a PEP, and I’ll happily expedite as much of the rest of the PEP process as I can.
You could have two PRs. One that is uncontroversial, doing inly minor edits. A second one that resolves the ambiguity in the current PEP. That one should be approved by the SC, after a dpo discussion leads to a clear interpretation.
Aye, I think the two step approach would definitely be viable for the reversibility clarifications:
a PR-only update that adds descriptive MAY (and potentially SHOULD NOT) guidance that encompasses the behaviour of both packaging and uv (and potentially poetry, as I believe that uses its own specifier parsing logic)
if it seems useful, a PEP that strengthens the wording to MUST/MUST NOT and actually restricts the marker syntax to enforce the non-commutative nature of the comparisons
It’s entirely plausible that the pragmatic interoperability implications of the first step may prove sufficient to make the second step redundant.
It might not. The key here is to get a clear interpretation and community consensus that the interpretation is OK. Our process allows for the decision there to be “make it as a text-only change” or “take it through the PEP process”.
The hard part is writing up the proposed change precisely and getting consensus. The PEP process feels to me like it’s mostly just admin beyond that[1]. Others seem to feel differently, though
Of course, part of the PEP process is checking that the proposal is precise enough, so I guess if people hope to get a roughly worded proposal accepted, the PEP process is annoyingly unforgiving… ↩︎
