Namespace support in pypi

[encukou (Petr Viktorin)]

@ncoghlan

When there are technical barriers to the best resolution, actual namesquatting is a defensible interim measure given the availability of PEP 541 to address disputes (e.g. I’ve held the “rpm”, “dnf” and “solv” names on PyPI for years, and relatively recently allowed a team from Red Hat access to the last to publish real libsolv bindings).

See proposal for name reservations: PyPI as a Project repository vs. Name registry (a.k.a. PyPI namesquatting, e.g. for Fedora packages) - #12 by encukou

@ncoghlan

The namesquatting workaround could be made more systematic (similar to the blocking of stdlib names), but any prefix based name reservation would only apply to future explicitly distro-controlled packages and, for that purpose, distros fall under the same design category as “largeco” in NJS’s write-up.

I don’t think distros need prefix name reservation. Who’d be the gatekeeper? If someone random contributor wants to write a Fedora-specific tool and name it fedora-foobar, they should go right ahead. (Though of course, just foobar would be a better name—if it’s good, others might want to adopt it.)