%pyproject_save_files license handlers
Hi Pythonistas,
%pyproject_save_files automatically handles marking license files
with %license when a build backend installs them into a package's
dist-info directory and the License-File header is specified in the
METADATA file. Currently, only setuptools and hatchling meet this
criteria. Notably, poetry and flit do not support this. They will
install license texts into the dist-info directory, but they do not add
the License-File metadata. The License-File tag is not standardized, and
discussion on PEP 639 which defines this standard has stalled. I believe
relying on this feature is a problem, as if a project changes build
systems or some other config and a packager doesn't realize, suddenly
the license file won't be marked with %license or even worse, not
installed at all. Since the pyproject macros read the build backend from
pyproject.toml without packagers having to manually specify anything
(which is generally great!), this situation seems likely to occur.
Until these issues are resolved, I propose banning this in Fedora and
requiring packagers to manually mark files with %license or at least
adding a large warning to the Packaging Guidelines. It can be similar to
the `'*' +auto` flags which are used by pyp2spec for automatic PyPI
builds in Copr but not allowed in Fedora proper.
What do y'all think? Am I missing something?
--
Best,
Maxwell G (@gotmax23)
Pronouns: He/They