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brettcannon PEP 621: Clarify expectations for sdists (#1652)
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PEP: 621 Title: Storing project metadata in pyproject.toml Author: Brett Cannon <brett@python.org>,

Dustin Ingram <di@python.org>, Paul Ganssle <paul at ganssle.io>, Pradyun Gedam <pradyunsg@gmail.com>, Sébastien Eustace <sebastien@eustace.io>, Thomas Kluyver <thomas@kluyver.me.uk>, Tzu-Ping Chung <uranusjr@gmail.com>

Discussions-To: https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-621-storing-project-metadata-in-pyproject-toml/4513 Status: Draft Type: Standards Track Content-Type: text/x-rst Created: 22-Jun-2020 Post-History: 22-Jun-2020

Abstract

This PEP specifies how to write a project's core metadata in a pyproject.toml file for packaging-related tools to consume.

Motivation

The key motivators of this PEP are:

  • Encourage users to specify core metadata statically for speed, ease of specification, and deterministic consumption by build back-ends
  • Provide a tool-agnostic way of specifying the metadata for ease of learning and transitioning between build back-ends
  • Allow for more code sharing between build back-ends for the "boring parts" of a project's metadata
  • Provide a way to specify canonical data both by users and in source distributions

This PEP does not attempt to standardize all possible metadata required by a build back-end, only the metadata covered by the core metadata specification which are very common across projects and would stand to benefit from being static and consistently specified. This means build back-ends are still free and able to innovate around patterns like how to specify the files to include in a wheel. There is also an included escape hatch for users and build back-ends to use when they choose to partially opt-out of this PEP (compared to opting-out of this PEP entirely, which is also possible).

This PEP is also not trying to change the underlying core metadata in any way. Such considerations should be done in a separate PEP which may lead to changes or additions to what this PEP specifies.

Rationale

The design guidelines the authors of this PEP followed were:

  • Define as much of the core metadata as reasonable
  • Define the metadata statically with an escape hatch for those who want to define it dynamically later
  • Use familiar names where it makes sense, but be willing to use more modern terminology
  • Try to be ergonomic within a TOML file instead of mirroring how tools specify metadata at a low-level when it makes sense
  • Learn from other build back-ends in the packaging ecosystem which have used TOML for their metadata
  • Don't try to standardize things which lack a pre-existing standard at a lower-level
  • When metadata is specified using this PEP, it is considered canonical
  • Make the specified data useful in a source distribution to statically define what metadata is known at the time of source distribution creation

Specification

When specifying project metadata, tools MUST adhere and honour the metadata as specified in this PEP. If metadata is improperly specified then tools MUST raise an error to notify the user about their mistake.

Data specified using this PEP is considered canonical. Tools CANNOT remove or change data, but they MAY add to it. This allows for tools to make data more accurate/static when possible by updating the data specified in the pyproject.toml file. For example, a version can become more specific when building a wheel (e.g. adding a local version), but it cannot become less specific.

Build back-ends creating a source distribution -- aka an "sdist" -- SHOULD provide as much data as possible using this PEP within a source distribution. The name and version fields MUST NOT be omitted and must be statically specified. Other fields which pertain to data surfaced on PyPI, and thus are not expected to be determined at wheel creation time, MUST NOT be listed as dynamic in a source distribution. All other fields have no specific requirements placed upon them in a source distribution.

Details

Table name

Tools MUST specify fields defined by this PEP in a table named [project]. No tools may add fields to this table which are not defined by this PEP or subsequent PEPs. For tools wishing to store their own settings in pyproject.toml, they may use the [tool] table as defined in PEP 518. The lack of a [project] table implicitly means the build back-end will dynamically provide all fields.

name

The name of the project.

Tools MUST require users to statically define this field.

Tools SHOULD normalize this name, as specified by PEP 503, as soon as it is read for internal consistency.

version

The version of the project as supported by PEP 440.

Users SHOULD prefer to specify already-normalized versions.

description

The summary description of the project.

readme

The full description of the project (i.e. the README).

The field accepts either a string or a table. If it is a string then it is the relative path to a text file containing the full description. Tools MUST assume the file's encoding is UTF-8. If the file path ends in a case-insensitive .md suffix, then tools MUST assume the content-type is text/markdown. If the file path ends in a case-insensitive .rst, then tools MUST assume the content-type is text/x-rst. If a tool recognizes more extensions than this PEP, they MAY infer the content-type for the user without specifying this field as dynamic. For all unrecognized suffixes when a content-type is not provided, tools MUST raise an error.

The readme field may also take a table. The file key has a string value representing a relative path to a file containing the full description. The text key has a string value which is the full description. These keys are mutually-exclusive, thus tools MUST raise an error if the metadata specifies both keys.

A table specified in the readme field also has a content-type field which takes a string specifying the content-type of the full description. A tool MUST raise an error if the metadata does not specify this field in the table. If the metadata does not specify the charset parameter, then it is assumed to be UTF-8. Tools MAY support other encodings if they choose to. Tools MAY support alternative content-types which they can transform to a content-type as supported by the core metadata. Otherwise tools MUST raise an error for unsupported content-types.

requires-python

  • Format: string
  • Core metadata: Requires-Python (link)
  • Source distributions: cannot by dynamic
  • Synonyms

The Python version requirements of the project.

Build back-ends MAY try to backfill appropriate Programming Language :: Python trove classifiers based on what the user specified for this field.

license

The table may have one of two keys. The file key has a string value that is a relative file path to the file which contains the license for the project. Tools MUST assume the file's encoding is UTF-8. The text key has a string value which is the license of the project. These keys are mutually exclusive, so a tool MUST raise an error if the metadata specifies both keys.

A practical string value for the license key has been purposefully left out to allow for a future PEP to specify support for SPDX expressions (the same logic applies to any sort of "type" field specifying what license the file or text represents). If such support comes to fruition and a tool can unambiguously identify the license specified, then the tool MAY fill in the appropriate trove classifiers.

authors/maintainers

  • Format: Array of inline tables with string keys and values
  • Core metadata: Author/Author-email/Maintainer/Maintainer-email (link)
  • Source distributions: cannot by dynamic
  • Synonyms
    • Flit: author/author-email/maintainer/maintainer-email (link)
    • Poetry: authors/maintainers (link)
    • Setuptools: author/author_email/maintainer/maintainer_email (link)

The people or organizations considered to be the "authors" of the project. The exact meaning is open to interpretation — it may list the original or primary authors, current maintainers, or owners of the package.

The "maintainers" field is similar to "authors" in that its exact meaning is open to interpretation.

These fields accept an array of tables with 2 keys: name and email. Both values must be strings. The name value MUST be a valid email name (i.e. whatever can be put as a name, before an email, in RFC #822) and not contain commas. The email value MUST be a valid email address. Both keys are optional.

Using the data to fill in core metadata is as follows:

  1. If only name is provided, the value goes in Author/Maintainer as appropriate.
  2. If only email is provided, the value goes in Author-email/Maintainer-email as appropriate.
  3. If both email and name are provided, the value goes in Author-email/Maintainer-email as appropriate, with the format {name} <{email}>.

keywords

The keywords for the project.

classifiers

Trove classifiers which apply to the project.

Build back-ends MAY automatically fill in extra trove classifiers if the back-end can deduce the classifiers from the provided metadata.

urls

  • Format: Table, with keys and values of strings
  • Core metadata: Project-URL (link)
  • Source distributions: cannot by dynamic
  • Synonyms

A table of URLs where the key is the URL label and the value is the URL itself.

Entry points

  • Format: Table ([project.scripts], [project.gui-scripts], and [project.entry-points])
  • Core metadata: N/A; Entry point specification
  • Source distributions: optional
  • Synonyms
    • Flit: [tool.flit.scripts] table for console scripts, [tool.flit.entrypoints] for the rest (link)
    • Poetry: [tool.poetry.scripts] table for console scripts (link)
    • Setuptools: entry_points (link)

There are three tables related to entry points. The [project.scripts] table corresponds to the console_scripts group in the core metadata. The key of the table is the name of the entry point and the value is the object reference.

The [project.gui-scripts] table corresponds to the gui_scripts group in the core metadata. Its format is the same as [project.scripts].

The [project.entry-points] table is a collection of tables. Each sub-table's name is an entry point group. The key and value semantics are the same as [project.scripts]. Users MUST NOT create nested sub-tables but instead keep the entry point groups to only one level deep.

Build back-ends MUST raise an error if the metadata defines a [project.entry-points.console_scripts] or [project.entry-points.gui_scripts] table, as they would be ambiguous in the face of [project.scripts] and [project.gui-scripts], respectively.

dependencies/optional-dependencies

  • Format: Array of PEP 508 strings (dependencies) and a table with values of arrays of PEP 508 strings (optional-dependencies)
  • Core metadata: Requires-Dist and Provides-Extra (link, link)
  • Source distributions: optional
  • Synonyms
    • Flit: requires for required dependencies, requires-extra for optional dependencies (link)
    • Poetry: [tool.poetry.dependencies] for dependencies (both required and for development), [tool.poetry.extras] for optional dependencies (link)
    • Setuptools: install_requires for required dependencies, extras_require for optional dependencies (link)

The (optional) dependencies of the project.

For dependencies, it is a key whose value is an array of strings. Each string represents a dependency of the project and MUST be formatted as a valid PEP 508 string. Each string maps directly to a Requires-Dist entry in the core metadata.

For optional-dependencies, it is a table where each key specifies an extra and whose value is an array of strings. The strings of the arrays must be valid PEP 508 strings. The keys MUST be valid values for the Provides-Extra core metadata. Each value in the array thus becomes a corresponding Requires-Dist entry for the matching Provides-Extra metadata.

dynamic

  • Format: Array of strings
  • Core metadata: N/A
  • Source distributions: optional
  • No synonyms

Specifies which fields listed by this PEP were intentionally unspecified so another tool can/will provide such metadata dynamically. This clearly delineates which metadata is purposefully unspecified and expected to stay unspecified compared to being provided via tooling later on.

  • A build back-end MUST honour statically-specified metadata (which means the metadata did not list the field in dynamic).
  • A build back-end MUST raise an error if the metadata specifies the name in dynamic.
  • If the core metadata specification lists a field as "Required", then the metadata MUST specify the field statically or list it in dynamic (build back-ends MUST raise an error otherwise, i.e. it should not be possible for a required field to not be listed somehow in the [project] table).
  • If the core metadata specification lists a field as "Optional", the metadata MAY list it in dynamic if the expectation is a build back-end will provide the data for the field later.
  • Build back-ends MUST raise an error if the metadata specifies a field statically as well as being listed in dynamic.
  • If the metadata does not list a field in dynamic, then a build back-end CANNOT fill in the requisite metadata on behalf of the user (i.e. dynamic is the only way to allow a tool to fill in metadata and the user must opt into the filling in).
  • Build back-ends MUST raise an error if the metadata specifies a field in dynamic but is still unspecified in the final artifact (i.e. the build back-end was unable to provide the data for a field listed in dynamic).

Example

[project]
name = "spam"
version = "2020.0.0"
description = "Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!"
readme = "README.rst"
requires-python = ">=3.8"
license = {file = "LICENSE.txt"}
keywords = ["egg", "bacon", "sausage", "tomatoes", "Lobster Thermidor"]
authors = [
  {email = "hi@pradyunsg.me"},
  {name = "Tzu-Ping Chung"}
]
maintainers = [
  {name = "Brett Cannon", email = "brett@python.org"}
]
classifiers = [
  "Development Status :: 4 - Beta",
  "Programming Language :: Python"
]

dependencies = [
  "httpx",
  "gidgethub[httpx]>4.0.0",
  "django>2.1; os_name != 'nt'",
  "django>2.0; os_name == 'nt'"
]

[project.optional-dependencies]
test = [
  "pytest < 5.0.0",
  "pytest-cov[all]"
]

[project.urls]
homepage = "example.com"
documentation = "readthedocs.org"
repository = "github.com"
changelog = "github.com/me/spam/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md"

[project.scripts]
spam-cli = "spam:main_cli"

[project.gui-scripts]
spam-gui = "spam:main_gui"

[project.entry-points."spam.magical"]
tomatoes = "spam:main_tomatoes"

Backwards Compatibility

As this provides a new way to specify a project's core metadata and is using a new table name which falls under the reserved namespace as outlined in PEP 518, there are no backwards-compatibility concerns.

Security Implications

There are no direct security concerns as this PEP covers how to statically define project metadata. Any security issues would stem from how tools consume the metadata and choose to act upon it.

How to Teach This

[How to teach users, new and experienced, how to apply the PEP to their work.]

Reference Implementation

There are currently no proofs-of-concept from any build tools implementing this PEP.

Rejected Ideas

Other table names

Anything under [build-system]

There was worry that using this table name would exacerbate confusion between build metadata and project metadata, e.g. by using [build-system.metadata] as a table.

[package]

Garnered no strong support.

[metadata]

The strongest contender after [project], but in the end it was agreed that [project] read better for certain sub-tables, e.g. [project.urls].

Support for a metadata provider

Initially there was a proposal to add a middle layer between the static metadata specified by this PEP and prepare_metadata_for_build_wheel() as specified by PEP 517. The idea was that if a project wanted to insert itself between a build back-end and the metadata there would be a hook to do so.

In the end the authors considered this idea unnecessarily complicated and would move the PEP away from its design goal to push people to define core metadata statically as much as possible.

Require a normalized project name

While it would make things easier for tools to only work with the normalized name as specified in PEP 503, the idea was ultimately rejected as it would hurt projects transitioning to using this PEP.

Specify files to include when building

The authors decided fairly quickly during design discussions that this PEP should focus exclusively on project metadata and not build metadata. As such, specifying what files should end up in a source distribution or wheel file is out of scope for this PEP.

Name the [project.urls] table [project.project-urls]

This suggestion came thanks to the corresponding core metadata being Project-Url. But once the overall table name of [project] was chosen, the redundant use of the word "project" suggested the current, shorter name was a better fit.

Have a separate url/home-page field

While the core metadata supports it, having a single field for a project's URL while also supporting a full table seemed redundant and confusing.

Recommend that tools put development-related dependencies into a "dev" extra

As various tools have grown the concept of required dependencies versus development dependencies, the idea of suggesting to tools that they put such development tool into a "dev" grouping came up. In the end, though, the authors deemed it out-of-scope for this specification to suggest such a workflow.

Have the dynamic field only require specifying missing required fields

The authors considered the idea that the dynamic field would only require the listing of missing required fields and make listing optional fields optional. In the end, though, this went against the design goal of promoting specifying as much information statically as possible.

Different structures for the readme field

The readme field had a proposed readme_content_type field, but the authors considered the string/table hybrid more practical for the common case while still accommodating the more complex case. Same goes for using long_description and a corresponding long_description_content_type field.

The file key in the table format was originally proposed as path, but file corresponds to setuptools' file key and there is no strong reason otherwise to choose one over the other.

Allowing the readme field to imply text/plain

The authors considered allowing for unspecified content-types which would default to text/plain, but decided that it would be best to be explicit in this case to prevent accidental incorrect renderings on PyPI and to force users to be clear in their intent.

Other names for dependencies/optional-dependencies

The authors originally proposed requires/extra-requires as names, but decided to go with the current names after a survey of other packaging ecosystems showed Python was an outlier:

  1. npm
  2. Rust
  3. Dart
  4. Swift
  5. Ruby

Normalizing on the current names helps minimize confusion for people coming from other ecosystems without using terminology that is necessarily foreign to new programmers. It also prevents potential confusion with requires in the [build-system] table as specified in PEP 518.

Support Maintainers/Maintainers-email

When discussing how to support Authors/Authors-email, the question was brought up as to how exactly authors differed from maintainers. As this was never clearly defined and no one could come up with a good definition, the decision was made to drop the concept of maintainers.

Drop maintainers to unify with authors

As the difference between Authors and Maintainers fields in the core metadata is unspecified and ambiguous, this PEP originally proposed unifying them as a single authors field. Other ecosystems have selected "author" as the term to use, so the thinking was to standardize on Author in the core metadata as the place to list people maintaining a project.

In the end, though, the decision to adhere to the core metadata was deemed more important to help with the the acceptance of this PEP, rather than trying to introduce a new interpretation for some of the core metadata.

Support an arbitrary depth of tables for project.entry-points

There was a worry that keeping project.entry-points to a depth of 1 for sub-tables would cause confusion to users if they use a dotted name and are not used to table names using quotation marks (e.g. project.entry-points."spam.magical"). But supporting an arbitrary depth -- e.g. project.entry-points.spam.magical -- would preclude any form of an exploded table format in the future. It would also complicate things for build back-ends as they would have to make sure to traverse the full table structure rather than a single level and raising errors as appropriate on value types.

Backfilling trove classifiers SHOULD occur instead of MAY happen

Originally this PEP said that tools SHOULD backfill appropriate trove classifiers. This was changed to say it MAY occur to emphasize it was entirely optional for build back-ends to implement.

Using structured TOML dictionaries to specify dependencies

The format for specifying the dependencies of a project was the most hotly contested topic in terms of data format. It led to the creation of both PEP 631 and PEP 633 which represent what is in this PEP and using TOML dictionaries more extensively, respectively. The decision on those PEPs can be found at https://discuss.python.org/t/how-to-specify-dependencies-pep-508-strings-or-a-table-in-toml/5243/38.

The authors briefly considered supporting both formats, but decided that it would lead to confusion as people would need to be familiar with two formats instead of just one.

Open Issues

None at the moment.

Copyright

This document is placed in the public domain or under the CC0-1.0-Universal license, whichever is more permissive.
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