PEP 621: how to specify dependencies?

[sdispater (Sébastien Eustace)]

@bernatgabor

Nothing stops you from loading that list into a dictionary once you read the file. And they’re equal.

That’s an extra step just to circumvent an issue that could be solved at the specification level.

@bernatgabor

Not sure what part of it you consider it to be more explicit?

You have the name of the elements specified directly in the file (like extras) which helps make it more self documenting.

@bernatgabor

Why? What’s wrong with https://packaging.pypa.io/en/latest/requirements? You update the property, and then call str on it?

That’s an extra dependency you need to have while you could rely on the fact that any TOML parser will return native types that are easily manipulable.

@bernatgabor

The biggest problem here is that to get where other languages are would be a lot of pain. So the question is are we prepared to hurt a lot in the next few years just to be on par with other languages? And while getting there also loosing some current features (e.g. copy-paste-ability of specifications).

So, we just give up and don’t try to improve on what we have? Shouldn’t this be a goal in itself? To provide a user/developer experience that is on par with what other languages have?

That being said, one reason other languages were able to pull this off is because they mostly have one or two tools of reference, instead of several tools like we have in Python, so making a transition like this is easier.