Remove the "Authority" from Packaging

[pf_moore (Paul Moore)]

@pradyunsg

pitrou:

I don’t think there are any formal rules as to how someone becomes a member of that body

W.R.T. the lack of formal rules, yes, the situation has to improve.

It’s probably worth pointing out that the PyPA is a collection of projects, not of individuals¹. So in one sense, the answer to @pitrou’s question is “Be a maintainer of a PyPA project”. As the PyPA explicitly does not have control over member projects’ governance, the rules on who is a maintainer for a particular project are at the discretion of that project.

¹ I refrain from commenting on whether that’s obvious to people outside of the PyPA, and I don’t want to get into a debate on whether that’s the way it “should be”…

[pradyunsg (Pradyun Gedam)]

Yep yep.

All of these details are things that benefit from a clear document to point to saying: “this is how PyPA works” .

And, that’s literally the PyPA governance discussion.

[pf_moore (Paul Moore)]

Agreed, I just wanted to add some context for people not involved in / following that discussion.

[pitrou (Antoine Pitrou)]

@pf_moore

So in one sense, the answer to @pitrou’s question is “Be a maintainer of a PyPA project”.

The question then becomes: what are the formal rules for a project to become a “PyPA” project?

[pf_moore (Paul Moore)]

@pitrou

what are the formal rules for a project to become a “PyPA” project?

As @pradyunsg said, that’s precisely the subject of the governance discussions.

[brylie (Brylie Christopher Oxley)]

Not sure if this is off-topic, but there is an ongoing discussion about making improvements to Python packaging:

Build Environments for PEP 517

This is relevant as I’m starting to figure out how to improve pip’s build logic and, hopefully, eventually move it out. A big part of the puzzle, is figuring out how we’d handle build environments. I’m aware that tox tried to use pep517, and gave up on it. pip isn’t 100% using pep517 either. I’m considering this thread a place for a broader discussion about how we want to go about designing/working on the build environments library that works for the use cases where building with PEP 517 occurs…

Perhaps that offers an opportunity to reduce some of the pain points related to this discussion?

[pitrou (Antoine Pitrou)]

@brylie

Perhaps that offers an opportunity to reduce some of the pain points related to this discussion?

Not sure why. Can you explain?

[brylie (Brylie Christopher Oxley)]

I vaguely recall there being two main threads in this discussion:

• ambiguity surrounding PYPA (authoratativeness, participation, process)
• pain points in packaging, relating to specific use-cases

Would the build step, i.e. building wheels, factor in to those pain points?

[pitrou (Antoine Pitrou)]

I don’t think it would, no.

[aeros (Kyle Stanley)]

@brylie

I vaguely recall there being two main threads in this discussion:

• ambiguity surrounding PYPA (authoratativeness, participation, process)
• pain points in packaging, relating to specific use-cases

Would the build step, i.e. building wheels, factor in to those pain points?

The general ambiguity with PyPA might be fairly relevant to this topic, but the technical components of packaging or building wheels wouldn’t be.

[pradyunsg (Pradyun Gedam)]

I’ve tried to codify how PyPA functions today, into a formal governance model, that the PyPA can look into formally adopting.

PyPA Governance - A "Status-Quo" Model

Following from the “Closing the loop on PyPA Governance / BDFRN” topic, I felt it would be best to start with a governance model that was close to our existing practices. I found a few hours today to polish up my thoughts on that and write something up – a “PyPA Status-Quo Governance Model” – https://gist.github.com/pradyunsg/e3f7de20f41dd49214954802eff35f90 A quick summary of this model: Redefines “PyPA members” as folks w/ triage or commit bit. Introduces “PyPA committers” as folks w/ co…

Other than the voting mechanics (which are borrowed from CPython’s governance model), that’s basically how the PyPA functions today AFAIK. Maybe that document addresses some of the concerns that @pitrou has?

[pradyunsg (Pradyun Gedam)]

FYI - @dustin just filed a PR to adopt the aforementioned governance model to be adopted as a PEP – https://github.com/python/peps/pull/1221/.