Paul Moore

To re-emphasise, though, this wouldn’t be a *requirement* for build backends to use that build tool, it would simply be a community-supported solution for the (non-trivial) problem of build backends...

I'm trying to think of a corresponding situation in a different ecosystem. How do you build a C compiler if you don't already have a C compiler? Or does "everything...

> thing is - unlike c code - python code executes just fine as long as it is made importable - so the bootstrap for running is far less of...

To clarify for my benefit - is the intention here to define a standard that *all* indexes must implement (in the same sense that PEP 503 covers the simple API)...

Cool - sorry, I missed that item. I presume that @dstufft would be BDFL-Delegate for this.

I'd also like the PEP to have a clear way for clients to query servers as to whether they support this API. Just trying a query and checking the response...

> I'd love to land it and go and implement the endpoints for Warehouse ASAP. I assume it still needs to be published for review & discussion prior to approval...

@teoliphant While theoretically a reasonable idea, this ignores the fact that a significant number of users are asking for pip-installable versions of these packages. Ignoring those users, or suggesting that...

The reason for this is that the only means for backends to pass data to the frontend is via stdout/stderr. And the inconsistent use of stdout vs stderr (by tools...

There's no requirement for frontends to use a library. See https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0517/#build-environment. And certainly there's no requirement to use the specific library `pep517`. So you'd have to describe the interface in...