PEP: 464
Title: Removal of the PyPI Mirror Authenticity API
Author: Donald Stufft <donald@stufft.io>
BDFL-Delegate: Richard Jones <richard@python.org>
Discussions-To: distutils-sig@python.org
Status: Final
Type: Process
Topic: Packaging
Created: 02-Mar-2014
Post-History: 04-Mar-2014
Replaces: 381
Resolution: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2014-March/024027.html


Abstract
========

This PEP proposes the deprecation and removal of the PyPI Mirror Authenticity
API, this includes the /serverkey URL and all of the URLs under /serversig.


Rationale
=========

The PyPI mirroring infrastructure (defined in :pep:`381`) provides a means to
mirror the content of PyPI used by the automatic installers, and as a component
of that, it provides a method for verifying the authenticity of the mirrored
content.

This PEP proposes the removal of this API due to:

* There are no known implementations that utilize this API, this includes
  `pip <http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/>`_ and
  `setuptools <http://pythonhosted.org//setuptools/>`_.
* Because this API uses DSA it is vulnerable to leaking the private key if
  there is *any* bias in the random nonce.
* This API solves one small corner of the trust problem, however the problem
  itself is much larger and it would be better to have a fully fledged system,
  such as :pep:`The Update Framework <458>`,
  instead.

Due to the issues it has and the lack of use it is the opinion of this PEP
that it does not provide any practical benefit to justify the additional
complexity.


Plan for Deprecation & Removal
==============================

Immediately upon the acceptance of this PEP the Mirror Authenticity API will
be considered deprecated and mirroring agents and installation tools should
stop accessing it.

Instead of actually removing it from the current code base (PyPI 1.0) the
current work to replace PyPI 1.0 with a new code base (PyPI 2.0) will simply
not implement this API. This would cause the API to be "removed" when the
switch from 1.0 to 2.0 occurs.

If PyPI 2.0 has not been deployed in place of PyPI 1.0 by Sept 01 2014 then
this PEP will be implemented in the PyPI 1.0 code base instead (by removing
the associated code).

No changes will be required in the installers, however :pep:`381` compliant
mirroring clients, such as
`bandersnatch <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/bandersnatch/>`_ and
`pep381client <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep381client/>`_ will need to be
updated to no longer attempt to mirror the /serversig URLs.


Copyright
=========

This document has been placed in the public domain.
