PEP: 345 Title: Metadata for Python Software Packages 1.2 Version: $Revision$ Last-Modified: $Date$ Author: Richard Jones Discussions-To: Distutils SIG Status: Draft Type: Standards Track Content-Type: text/x-rst Created: 28-Apr-2005 Python-Version: 2.5 Post-History: Replaces: 314 Abstract ======== This PEP describes a mechanism for adding metadata to Python packages. It includes specifics of the field names, and their semantics and usage. This document specifies version 1.2 of the metadata format. Version 1.0 is specified in PEP 241. Version 1.1 is specified in PEP 314. Version 1.2 of the metadata format adds a number of optional fields designed to make third-party packaging of Python Software easier. These fields are "Requires-Python", "Requires-External", "Requires-Dist", "Provides-Dist", and "Obsoletes-Dist". This version also updates the "Metadata-Version" field, and adds new fields, "Maintainer" and Maintainer-email". Fields ====== This section specifies the names and semantics of each of the supported metadata fields. Fields marked with "(Multiple use)" may be specified multiple times in a single PKG-INFO file. Other fields may only occur once in a PKG-INFO file. Fields marked with "(optional)" are not required to appear in a valid PKG-INFO file; all other fields must be present. Metadata-Version Version of the file format; "1.0", "1.1" and "1.2" are the only legal values here. Example:: Metadata-Version: 1.2 Name The name of the package. Example:: Name: BeagleVote Version A string containing the package's version number. This field must be in the format specified in `PEP 386`_. Example:: Version: 1.0a2 Platform (multiple use) A comma-separated list of platform specifications, summarizing the operating systems supported by the package which are not listed in the "Operating System" Trove classifiers. See "Classifier" below. Example:: Platform: ObscureUnix, RareDOS Supported-Platform (multiple use) Binary distributions containing a PKG-INFO file will use the Supported-Platform field in their metadata to specify the OS and CPU for which the binary package was compiled. The semantics of the Supported-Platform field are not specified in this PEP. Example:: Supported-Platform: RedHat 7.2 Supported-Platform: i386-win32-2791 Summary A one-line summary of what the package does. Example:: Summary: A module for collecting votes from beagles. Description (optional) A longer description of the package that can run to several paragraphs. Software that deals with metadata should not assume any maximum size for this field, though people shouldn't include their instruction manual as the description. The contents of this field can be written using reStructuredText markup [1]_. For programs that work with the metadata, supporting markup is optional; programs can also display the contents of the field as-is. This means that authors should be conservative in the markup they use. Example:: Description: This module collects votes from beagles in order to determine their electoral wishes. Do *not* try to use this module with basset hounds; it makes them grumpy. Keywords (optional) A list of additional keywords to be used to assist searching for the package in a larger catalog. Example:: Keywords: dog puppy voting election Home-page (optional) A string containing the URL for the package's home page. Example:: Home-page: http://www.example.com/~cschultz/bvote/ Download-URL A string containing the URL from which this version of the package can be downloaded. (This means that the URL can't be something like ".../package-latest.tgz", but instead must be ".../package-0.45.tgz".) Author (optional) A string containing the author's name at a minimum; additional contact information may be provided. Example:: Author: C. Schultz, Universal Features Syndicate, Los Angeles, CA Author-email A string containing the author's e-mail address. It can contain a name and e-mail address in the legal forms for a RFC-822 ``From:`` header. It's not optional because cataloging systems can use the e-mail portion of this field as a unique key representing the author. A catalog might provide authors the ability to store their GPG key, personal home page, and other additional metadata *about the author*, and optionally the ability to associate several e-mail addresses with the same person. Author-related metadata fields are not covered by this PEP. Example:: Author-email: "C. Schultz" Maintainer (optional) A string containing the maintainer's name at a minimum; additional contact information may be provided. Note that this field is intended for use when a package is being maintained by someone other than the original author: it should be omitted if it is identical to ``Author``. Example:: Maintainer: C. Schultz, Universal Features Syndicate, Los Angeles, CA Maintainer-email (optional) A string containing the maintainer's e-mail address. It can contain a name and e-mail address in the legal forms for a RFC-822 ``From:`` header. Note that this field is intended for use when a package is being maintained by someone other than the original author: it should be omitted if it is identical to ``Author-email``. Example:: Maintainer-email: "C. Schultz" License (optional) Text indicating the license covering the package where the license is not a selection from the "License" Trove classifiers. See "Classifier" below. This field may also be used to specify a particular version of a licencse which is named via the ``Classifier`` field, or to indicate a variation or exception to such a license. Examples:: License: This software may only be obtained by sending the author a postcard, and then the user promises not to redistribute it. License: GPL version 3, excluding DRM provisions Classifier (multiple use) Each entry is a string giving a single classification value for the package. Classifiers are described in PEP 301 [2]. Examples:: Classifier: Development Status :: 4 - Beta Classifier: Environment :: Console (Text Based) Requires (multiple use) Each entry contains a string describing some other module or package required by this package. The format of a requirement string is identical to that of a module or package name usable with the ``import`` statement, optionally followed by a version declaration within parentheses. A version declaration is a series of conditional operators and version numbers, separated by commas. Conditional operators must be one of "<", ">", "<=", ">=", "==", and "!=". Version numbers must be in the format accepted by the distutils.version.StrictVersion class: two or three dot-separated numeric components, with an optional "pre-release" tag on the end consisting of the letter 'a' or 'b' followed by a number. Example version numbers are "1.0", "2.3a2", "1.3.99", Any number of conditional operators can be specified, e.g. the string ">1.0, !=1.3.4, <2.0" is a legal version declaration. All of the following are possible requirement strings: "rfc822", "zlib (>=1.1.4)", "zope". There's no canonical list of what strings should be used; the Python community is left to choose its own standards. Examples:: Requires: re Requires: sys Requires: zlib Requires: xml.parsers.expat (>1.0) Requires: psycopg Note: this field is now deprecated in favor of ``Requires-Dist``. Provides (multiple use) Each entry contains a string describing a package or module that will be provided by this package once it is installed. These strings should match the ones used in Requirements fields. A version declaration may be supplied (without a comparison operator); the package's version number will be implied if none is specified. Examples:: Provides: xml Provides: xml.utils Provides: xml.utils.iso8601 Provides: xml.dom Provides: xmltools (1.3) Note: this field is now deprecated in favor of ``Provides-Dist``. Obsoletes (multiple use) Each entry contains a string describing a package or module that this package renders obsolete, meaning that the two packages should not be installed at the same time. Version declarations can be supplied. The most common use of this field will be in case a package name changes, e.g. Gorgon 2.3 gets subsumed into Torqued Python 1.0. When you install Torqued Python, the Gorgon package should be removed. Example:: Obsoletes: Gorgon Note: this field is now deprecated in favor of ``Obsoletes-Dist``. Requires-Dist (multiple use) Each entry contains a string naming some other distutils project required by this package. The format of a requirement string is identical to that of a distutils project name (e.g., as found in the ``Name:`` field. optionally followed by a version declaration within parentheses. The distutils project names should correspond to names as found on the `Python Package Index`_. A version declaration is a series of conditional operators and version numbers, separated by commas. Conditional operators must be one of "<", ">", "<=", ">=", "==", and "!=". Version numbers must be in the format specified in `PEP 386`_. Any number of conditional operators can be specified, e.g. the string ">1.0, !=1.3.4, <2.0" is a legal version declaration. Examples:: Requires-Dist: pkginfo Requires-Dist: PasteDeploy Requires-Dist: zope.interface (>3.5.0) Provides-Dist (multiple use) Each entry contains a string naming a distutlis project which is contained within this distribution. This field *must* include the project identified in the ``Name`` field. A distribution may provide additional names, e.g. to indicate that multiple projects have been bundled together. For instance, source distributions of the ``ZODB`` project have historically included the ``transaction`` project, which is now available as a separate distribution. Installing such a source distribution satisfies requirements for both ``ZODB`` and ``transaction``. A distribution may also provide a "virtual" project name, which does not correspond to any separately-distributed project: such a name might be used to indicate an abstract capability which could be supplied by one of multiple projects. E.g., multiple projects might supply RDBMS bindings for use by a given ORM: each project might declare that it provides ``ORM-bindings``, allowing other projects to depend only on having at most one of them installed. A version declaration may be supplied (without a comparison operator); the distribution's version number will be implied if none is specified. Version numbers must be in the format specified in `PEP 386`_. Examples:: Provides-Dist: OtherPackage Provides-Dist: AnotherPackage (3.4) Provides-Dist: virtual_package Obsoletes-Dist (multiple use) Each entry contains a string describing a distutils project which this package renders obsolete, meaning that the two packages should not be installed at the same time. Version declarations can be supplied. Version numbers must be in the format specified in `PEP 386`_. The most common use of this field will be in case a project name changes, e.g. Gorgon 2.3 gets subsumed into Torqued Python 1.0. When you install Torqued Python, the Gorgon distribution should be removed. Examples:: Obsoletes-Dist: Gorgon Obsoletes-Dist: OtherPackage (<3.0) Requires-Python This field specifies the Python version(s) that the package is guaranteed to be compatible with. The format of the field is a series of conditional operators and version numbers, separated by commas. Conditional operators must be one of "<", ">", "<=", ">=", "==", and "!=". Version numbers must be in the format specified in `PEP 386`_. Any number of conditional operators can be specified, e.g. the string ">1.0, !=1.3.4, <2.0" is a legal version declaration. Examples:: Requires-Python: >2.1 Requires-Python: >=2.3.4 Requires-External (multiple use) Each entry contains a string describing some dependency in the system that the package is to be used. This field is intended to serve as a hint to downstream package maintainers, and has no semantics which are meaningful to the ``distutils`` package. The format of a requirement string is a name of an external dependency, optionally followed by a version declaration within parentheses. A version declaration is a series of conditional operators and version numbers, separated by commas. Conditional operators must be one of "<", ">", "<=", ">=", "==", and "!=". Because they refer to non-Python software releases, version numbers for this field are **not** required to conform to the format specified in `PEP 386`_: they should correspond to the version scheme used by the external dependency. Any number of conditional operators can be specified, e.g. the string ">1.0, !=1.3.4, <2.0" is a legal version declaration. The canonical list of what strings are allowed is available in the `Python Package Index`_ database: see `External References Registry`_ below for a description of how the allowed values are managed. Some dependencies are anticipated to be quite broad, eg. "C", indicating a C compiler is required. Examples:: Requires: C Requires: libpng (>=1.5) Copyright Indicates the party or parties, and the year of copyright covering the package. Examples:: Copyright: Guido van Rossum, 1991 Copyright: Python Software Foundation, 2005 Copyright: Public Domain Version Specifiers ================== The specification for distribution version specifiers has been moved to `PEP 386`_. External References Registry ============================ Stores in the `Python Package Index`_ database a list of (name, description, URI) identifying an external reference that may be used as a value in a Requires-External field. The name and description are required, but URI is not (as there is no single useful URI for "C"). Submissions to the registry are open to the community, and may be performed through the web or using the command-line. The names in the registry will be created under a first-comes first-wins basis. Other packagers of Python software (eg. to deb, rpm, etc) should be able to translate the `Requires-external` field to names in their own packaging system. XXX command-line interface needs work, obviously Summary of Differences From PEP 314 =================================== * Metadata-Version is now 1.2. * Added fields: - Maintainer - Maintainer-email - Requires-Python - Requires-External - Requires-Dist - Provides-Dist - Obsoletes-Dist * Deprecated fields: - Requires (in favor of Requires-Dist) - Provides (in favor of Provides-Dist) - Obsoletes (in favor of Obsoletes-Dist) References ========== This document specifies version 1.2 of the metadata format. Version 1.0 is specified in PEP 241. Version 1.1 is specified in PEP 314. .. [1] reStructuredText markup: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/ .. _`Python Package Index`: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/ .. _`PEP 386`: http://svn.python.org/projects/peps/trunk/pep-0386.txt Copyright ========= This document has been placed in the public domain. Acknowledgements ================ Fred Drake, Anthony Baxter and Matthias Klose have all contributed to the ideas presented in this PEP. .. 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