Where to publish importlib_metadata and importlib.metadata?
At PyCon, @dstufft raised the concern that this functionality feels misplaced under importlib
. I sympathize with that concern... and I do see packaging.metadata
as a better name for the home for this functionality, especially when you consider use cases such as the one illustrated in #82 (closed), where replacing that functionality from pkg_resources puts demands on both packaging and importlib.metadata.
Despite this concern, Barry and I determined the benefit of exposing this functionality in the standard library, such that they are guaranteed to be available, is a greater importance.
As a result, we decided to move forward with publishing this functionality as importlib.metadata in a provisional state for Python 3.8. Perhaps it would be better instead to only publish this functionality in packaging
or for the stdlib to include a version of packaging
.
@warsaw Has your opinion shifted any since our last discussions? Let's discuss next week during the Dev Summit if you have time.