[Python-Dev] Proposing PEP 345 : Metadata for Python Software Packages 1.2 (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Mon Dec 28 19:08:50 CET 2009

2009/12/28 "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>:

Does that mean we should add "or"?

Requires-Python: 2.5 or 2.6 It would be redundant to have it, since you can also write Requires-Python: >=2.5, <2.7_ _Should we also use "and" instead of ","?_ _Requires-Python: >= 2.5 and < 2.6 Perhaps. I think the Linux packaging formats uniformly use the comma.

(I'm picking a somewhat random message to reply to here - in general, I agree with the sentiments expressed in Martin's mail).

It seems to me that there's too much of an attempt to invent "do what I mean" semantics, which is complicating the whole issue here. Python prefers "explicit is better than implicit" over the Perl "do what I mean". I don't see why that should be any less the case here.

It seems to me that everything people might want to express can be covered with the existing operators, plus comma meaning "and". Maybe some people find "2.5, 2.6" more obvious than ">= 2.5, < 2.7" - but satisfying them at the cost of introducing complexity and ambiguity into the syntax seems to me to be a serious mistake.

Paul.

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