PEP: 438
Title: Transitioning to release-file hosting on PyPI
Author: Holger Krekel <holger@merlinux.eu>, Carl Meyer <carl@oddbird.net>
BDFL-Delegate: Richard Jones <richard@python.org>
Discussions-To: distutils-sig@python.org
Status: Superseded
Type: Process
Topic: Packaging
Created: 15-Mar-2013
Post-History: 19-May-2013
Superseded-By: 470
Resolution: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2013-May/020773.html


Abstract
========

This PEP proposes a backward-compatible two-phase transition process
to speed up, simplify and robustify installing from the
pypi.python.org (PyPI) package index.  To ease the transition and
minimize client-side friction, **no changes to distutils or existing
installation tools are required in order to benefit from the first
transition phase, which will result in faster, more reliable installs
for most existing packages**.

The first transition phase implements easy and explicit means for a
package maintainer to control which release file links are served to
present-day installation tools.  The first phase also includes the
implementation of analysis tools for present-day packages, to support
communication with package maintainers and the automated setting of
default modes for controlling release file links.  The first phase
also will default newly-registered projects on PyPI to only serve
links to release files which were uploaded to PyPI.

The second transition phase concerns end-user installation tools,
which shall default to only install release files that are hosted on
PyPI and tell the user if external release files exist, offering a
choice to automatically use those external files.  External release
files shall in the future be registered together with a checksum
hash so that installation tools can verify the integrity of the
eventual download (PyPI-hosted release files always carry such
a checksum).

Alternative PyPI server implementations should implement the new
simple index serving behaviour of transition phase 1 to avoid
installation tools treating their release links as external ones in
phase 2.


Rationale
=========

.. _history:

History and motivations for external hosting
--------------------------------------------

When PyPI went online, it offered release registration but had no
facility to host release files itself.  When hosting was added, no
automated downloading tool existed yet.  When Phillip Eby implemented
automated downloading (through setuptools), he made the choice to
allow people to use download hosts of their choice.  The finding of
externally-hosted packages was implemented as follows:

#. The PyPI ``simple/`` index for a package contains all links found
   by scraping them from that package's long_description metadata for
   any release. Links in the "Download-URL" and "Home-page" metadata
   fields are given ``rel=download`` and ``rel=homepage`` attributes,
   respectively.

#. Any of these links whose target is a file whose name appears to be
   in the form of an installable source or binary distribution, with
   name in the form "packagename-version.ARCHIVEEXT", is considered a
   potential installation candidate by installation tools.

#. Similarly, any links suffixed with an "#egg=packagename-version"
   fragment are considered an installation candidate.

#. Additionally, the ``rel=homepage`` and ``rel=download`` links are
   crawled by installation tools and, if HTML, are themselves scraped
   for release-file links in the above formats.

See the easy_install documentation for a complete description of this
behavior. [1]_

Today, most packages indexed on PyPI host their release files on
PyPI. Out of 29,117 total projects on PyPI, only 2,581 (less than 10%)
include any links to installable files that are available only
off-PyPI. [2]_

There are many reasons [3]_ why people have chosen external
hosting. To cite just a few:

- release processes and scripts have been developed already and upload
  to external sites

- it takes too long to upload large files from some places in the
  world

- export restrictions e.g. for crypto-related software

- company policies which require offering open source packages through
  own sites

- problems with integrating uploading to PyPI into one's release
  process (because of release policies)

- desiring download statistics different from those maintained by PyPI

- perceived bad reliability of PyPI

- not aware that PyPI offers file-hosting

Irrespective of the present-day validity of these reasons, there
clearly is a history why people choose to host files externally and it
even was for some time the only way you could do things.  This PEP
takes the position that there remain some valid reasons for
external hosting even today.

Problem
-------

**Today, python package installers (pip, easy_install, buildout, and
others) often need to query many non-PyPI URLs even if there are no
externally hosted files**.  Apart from querying pypi.python.org's
simple index pages, also all homepages and download pages ever
specified with any release of a package are crawled by an installer.
The need for installers to crawl external sites slows down
installation and makes for a brittle and unreliable installation
process.  Those sites and packages also don't take part in the
:pep:`381` mirroring infrastructure, further decreasing reliability
and speed of automated installation processes around the world.

Most packages are hosted directly on pypi.python.org [2]_.  Even for
these packages, installers still crawl their homepage and
download-url, if specified.  Many package uploaders are not aware that
specifying the "homepage" or "download-url" in their package metadata
will needlessly slow down the installation process for all users.

Relying on third party sites also opens up more attack vectors for
injecting malicious packages into sites using automated installs.  A
simple attack might just involve getting hold of an old now-unused
homepage domain and placing malicious packages there.  Moreover,
performing a Man-in-The-Middle (MITM) attack between an installation
site and any of the download sites can inject malicious packages on
the installation site.  As many homepages and download locations are
using HTTP and not HTTPS, such attacks are not hard to launch.  Such
MITM attacks can easily happen even for packages which never intended
to host files externally as their homepages are contacted by
installers anyway.

There is currently no way for package maintainers to avoid
external-link crawling, other than removing all homepage/download url
metadata for all historic releases.  While a script [4]_ has been
written to perform this action, it is not a good general solution
because it removes useful metadata from PyPI releases.

Even if the sites referenced by "Homepage" and "Download-URL" links
were not scraped for further links, there is no obvious way under the
current system for a package owner to link to an installable file from
a long_description metadata field (which is shown as package
documentation on ``/pypi/PKG``) without installation tools
automatically considering that file a candidate for installation.
Conversely, there is no way to explicitly register multiple external
release files without putting them in metadata fields.


Goals
-----

These are the goals to be achieved by implementation of this PEP:

* Package owners should be able to explicitly control which files are
  presented by PyPI to installer tools as installation
  candidates. Installation should not be slowed and made less reliable
  by extensive and unnecessary crawling of links that package owners
  did not explicitly nominate as installation files.

* It should remain possible for package owners to choose to host their
  release files on their own hosting, external to PyPI. It should be
  easy for a user to request the installation of such releases using
  automated installer tools, especially if the external release files
  were registered together with a checksum hash.

* Automated installer tools should not install externally-hosted
  packages **by default**, but require explicit authorization to do so
  by the user. When tools refuse to install such a package by default,
  they should tell the user exactly which external link(s) the
  installer needs to follow, and what option(s) the user can provide
  to authorize the tool to follow those links. PyPI should provide all
  necessary metadata for installer tools to implement this easily and
  within a single request/reply interaction.

* Migration from the status quo to the above points should be gradual
  and minimize breakage. This includes tooling that makes it easy for
  package owners with an existing release process that uploads to
  non-PyPI hosting to also upload those release files to PyPI.


Solution / two transition phases
================================

The first transition phase introduces a "hosting-mode" field for each
project on PyPI, allowing package owners explicit control of which
release file links are served to present-day installation tools in the
machine-readable ``simple/`` index. The first transition will, after
successful hosting-mode manipulations by individual early-adopters,
set a default hosting mode for existing packages, based on automated
analysis.  **Maintainers will be notified one month ahead of any such
automated change**.  At completion of the first transition phase,
**all present-day existing release and installation processes and
tools are expected to continue working**.  Any remaining errors or
problems are expected to only relate to installation of individual
packages and can be easily corrected by package maintainers or PyPI
admins if maintainers are not reachable.

Also in the first phase, each link served in the ``simple/`` index
will be explicitly marked as ``rel="internal"`` if it is hosted by the
index itself (even if on a separate domain, which may be the case if
the index uses a CDN for file-serving). Any link not so marked will be
considered an external link.

In the second transition phase, PyPI client installation tools shall
be updated to default to only install ``rel="internal"`` packages
unless a user specifies option(s) to permit installing from external
links. See `second transition phase`_ for details on how installers
should behave.

Maintainers of packages which currently host release files on non-PyPI
sites shall receive instructions and tools to ease "re-hosting" of
their historic and future package release files.  This re-hosting tool
MUST be available before automated hosting-mode changes are announced
to package maintainers.


Implementation
==============

Hosting modes
-------------

The foundation of the first transition phase is the introduction of
three "modes" of PyPI hosting for a package, affecting which links are
generated for the ``simple/`` index.  These modes are implemented
without requiring changes to installation tools via changes to the
algorithm for generating the machine-readable ``simple/`` index.

The modes are:

- ``pypi-scrape-crawl``: no change from the current situation of
  generating machine-readable links for installation tools, as
  outlined in the history_.

- ``pypi-scrape``: for a package in this mode, links to be added to
  the ``simple/`` index are still scraped from package
  metadata. However, the "Home-page" and "Download-url" links are
  given ``rel=ext-homepage`` and ``rel=ext-download`` attributes
  instead of ``rel=homepage`` and ``rel=download``. The effect of this
  (with no change in installation tools necessary) is that these links
  will not be followed and scraped for further candidate links by
  present-day installation tools: only installable files directly
  hosted from PyPI or linked directly from PyPI metadata will be
  considered for installation.  Installation tools MAY evolve to offer
  an option to use the new rel-attribution to crawl external pages but
  MUST NOT default to it.

- ``pypi-explicit``: for a package in this mode, only links to release
  files uploaded to PyPI, and external links to release files
  explicitly nominated by the package owner, will be added to the
  ``simple/`` index. PyPI will provide a new interface for package
  owners to supply external release-file URLs. These URLs MUST include
  a URL fragment in the form "#hashtype=hashvalue" specifying a hash
  of the externally-linked file which installer tools MUST use to
  validate that they have downloaded the intended file.

Thus the hope is that eventually all projects on PyPI can be migrated
to the ``pypi-explicit`` mode, while preserving the ability to install
release files hosted externally via installer tools. Deprecation of
hosting modes to eventually only allow the ``pypi-explicit`` mode is
NOT REGULATED by this PEP but is expected to become feasible some time
after successful implementation of the transition phases described in
this PEP.  It is expected that deprecation requires **a new process to
deal with abandoned packages** because of unreachable maintainers for
still popular packages.


First transition phase (PyPI)
-----------------------------

The proposed solution consists of multiple implementation and
communication steps:

#. Implement in PyPI the three modes described above, with an
   interface for package owners to select the mode for each package
   and register explicit external file URLs.

#. For packages in all modes, label links in the ``simple/`` index to
   index-hosted files with ``rel="internal"``, to make it easier for
   client tools to distinguish these links in the second phase.

#. Add an HTML tag ``<meta name="api-version" value="2">`` to all
   ``simple/`` index pages, to allow clients to distinguish between
   indexes providing the ``rel="internal"`` metadata and older ones
   that do not.

#. Default all newly-registered packages to ``pypi-explicit`` mode
   (package owners can still switch to the other modes as desired).

#. Determine (via automated analysis [2]_) which packages have all
   installable files available on PyPI itself (group A), which have
   all installable files on PyPI or linked directly from PyPI metadata
   (group B), and which have installable versions available that are
   linked only from external homepage/download HTML pages (group C).

#. Send mail to maintainers of projects in group A that their project
   will be automatically configured to ``pypi-explicit`` mode in one
   month, and similarly to maintainers of projects in group B that
   their project will be automatically configured to ``pypi-scrape``
   mode.  Inform them that this change is not expected to affect
   installability of their project at all, but will result in faster
   and safer installs for their users.  Encourage them to set this
   mode themselves sooner to benefit their users.

#. Send mail to maintainers of packages in group C that their package
   hosting mode is ``pypi-scrape-crawl``, list the URLs which
   currently are crawled, and suggest that they either re-host their
   packages directly on PyPI and switch to ``pypi-explicit``, or at
   least provide direct links to release files in PyPI metadata and
   switch to ``pypi-scrape``.  Provide instructions and tools to help
   with these transitions.


.. _`second transition phase`:

Second transition phase (installer tools)
-----------------------------------------

For the second transition phase, maintainers of installation tools are
asked to release two updates.

The first update shall provide clear warnings if externally-hosted
release files (that is, files whose link does not include
``rel="internal"``) are selected for download, for which projects and
URLs exactly this happens, and warn that in future versions
externally-hosted downloads will be disabled by default.

The second update should change the default mode to allow only
installation of ``rel="internal"`` package files, and allow
installation of externally-hosted packages only when the user supplies
an option.

The installer should distinguish between verifiable and non-verifiable
external links. A verifiable external link is a direct link to an
installable file from the PyPI ``simple/`` index that includes a hash
in the URL fragment ("#hashtype=hashvalue") which can be used to
verify the integrity of the downloaded file. A non-verifiable external
link is any link (other than those explicitly supplied by the user of
an installer tool) without a hash, scraped from external HTML, or
injected into the search via some other non-PyPI source
(e.g. setuptools' ``dependency_links`` feature).

Installers should provide a blanket option to allow
installing any verifiable external link. Non-verifiable external links
should only be installed if the user-provided option specifies exactly
which external domains can be used or for which specific package names
external links can be used.

When download of an externally-hosted package is disallowed by the
default configuration, the user should be notified, with instructions
for how to make the install succeed and warnings about the implication
(that a file will be downloaded from a site that is not part of the
package index). The warning given for non-verifiable links should
clearly state that the installer cannot verify the integrity of the
downloaded file. The warning given for verifiable external links
should simply note that the file will be downloaded from an external
URL, but that the file integrity can be verified by checksum.

Alternative PyPI-compatible index implementations should upgrade to
begin providing the ``rel="internal"`` metadata and the ``<meta
name="api-version" value="2">`` tag as soon as possible. For
alternative indexes which do not yet provide the meta tag in their
``simple/`` pages, installation tools should provide
backwards-compatible fallback behavior (treat links as internal as in
pre-PEP times and provide a warning).


API For Submitting External Distribution URLs
---------------------------------------------

New distribution URLs may be submitted by performing a HTTP POST to
the URL:

    https://pypi.python.org/pypi

With the following form-encoded data:

============== ================================
Name           Value
-------------- --------------------------------
:action        The string "urls"
name           The package name as a string
version        The release version as a string
new-url        The new URL to store
submit_new_url The string "yes"
============== ================================

The POST must be accompanied by an HTTP Basic Auth header encoding the
username and password of the user authorized to maintain the package
on PyPI.

The HTTP response to this request will be one of:

======= ============ ================================================
Code    Meaning      URL submission implications
------- ------------ ------------------------------------------------
200     OK           Everything worked just fine
400     Bad request  Data provided for submission was malformed
401     Unauthorised The username or password supplied were incorrect
403     Forbidden    User does not have permission to update the
                     package information (not Owner or Maintainer)
======= ============ ================================================


References
==========

.. [1] Phillip Eby, easy_install 'Package Index "API"' documentation,
       http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#package-index-api

.. [2] Donald Stufft, automated analysis of PyPI project links,
       https://github.com/dstufft/pypi.linkcheck

.. [3] Marc-Andre Lemburg, reasons for external hosting,
       https://mail.python.org/pipermail/catalog-sig/2013-March/005626.html

.. [4] Holger Krekel, script to remove homepage/download metadata for
       all releases
       https://mail.python.org/pipermail/catalog-sig/2013-February/005423.html


Acknowledgments
===============

Phillip Eby for precise information and the basic ideas to implement
the transition via server-side changes only.

Donald Stufft for pushing away from external hosting and offering to
implement both a Pull Request for the necessary PyPI changes and the
analysis tool to drive the transition phase 1.

Marc-Andre Lemburg, Alyssa Coghlan and catalog-sig in general for
thinking through issues regarding getting rid of "external hosting".


Copyright
=========

This document has been placed in the public domain.
