[di]

Hello, I'm the person who deprecated `setup.py upload`. The warnings should be telling you that `twine` is the preferred tool for uploading.

The reason for this is that right now, that command comes from `distutils`, which is part of the standard library. There is a huge disadvantage to bundling this functionality with your Python distribution, namely that it can only get upgraded when you upgrade your Python distribution. A lot of folks are still running versions of Python from several years ago, which is fine, but it means that they are missing out on anything new that's been added in the meantime.

For example, earlier this year, we released a new package metadata version which allows people to specify their package descriptions with Markdown. This required a new metadata field, which old versions of `distutils` know nothing about.

Upgrading `distutils` to support it would require that these changes go though the long process of making it into a Python release, and even then they would only be available to folks using the latest release.

Moving this functionality from `distutils` to a tool like `twine` means that new features can be made available nearly immediately (just have to make a release to PyPI) and that they're available to users on any Python distribution (just have to upgrade from PyPI).

The `distutils` standard library module comes from a time when we didn't have PyPI and thus, didn't have a better way to distribute this code to users. We have PyPI now though, so bundling `distutils` with Python is becoming less and less useful.

[1wd]

Why not bundle twine like pip? In fact, why not merge the twine functionality into pip?

[di]

> Why not bundle twine like pip?

The `pip` package is not actually bundled with your Python distribution, instead the standard library has `ensurepip` which provides a means of bootstrapping a `pip` installation without `pip` itself. See [0].

> In fact, why not merge the twine functionality into pip?

This has been considered and still might happen, see [1], specifically the comment at [2].

[0] https://docs.python.org/3/library/ensurepip.html

[1] https://github.com/pypa/packaging-problems/issues/60

[2] https://github.com/pypa/packaging-problems/issues/60#issueco...

[1wd]

> The `pip` package is not actually bundled with your Python distribution

It is bundled, as mentioned in the link [0] you posted: "pip is an independent project with its own release cycle, and the latest available stable version is bundled with maintenance and feature releases of the CPython reference interpreter."

> the standard library has `ensurepip`

Ensurepip is for Python distributions, which are supposed to do use it automatically to provide the bundled pip. See [3]: "Ensurepip is the mechanism that Python uses to bundle pip with Python." Basically it's the installer of the bundled pip. At least that's how I understand it.

> This has been considered and still might happen, see [1]

Note that while the users there all basically say the same thing (twine should be merged into pip as "pip publish") the (two out of three) PyPA devs say it "would be a major mistake" and they are "against adding pip publish". (Before starting offtopic rants against poetry...) I somehow doubt this will improve soon.

[3] https://mail.python.org/mm3/archives/list/distutils-sig@pyth...

[mixmastamyk]

What if you are already on Py3.6, don't need markdown-descriptions (not sure what that is btw), and been happily using setup.py upload for a decade?