Aws-cli: Open a PEP541 request to use the name aws

[ms-marcus]

Background

The current situation is that the aws package name on pypi is used by https://github.com/eofs/aws. This is confusing both for new users and for people like me who keep expecting to be able to pip install aws (because it's the same name as the program I end up running) and be up and running. However, doing so gives you a broken program and it is not immediately clear from the output that the program you are trying to run is not, in fact, aws-cli but is a completely different abandoned program called aws.

Attempts at resolution

There have been a few attempts at resolution with the original package author (https://github.com/eofs/aws/issues/3, https://github.com/simonm3/aws2/issues/1) but he has not responded to any of them.

Suggested resolution

Although so far, this doesn't sound like something you can do anything about, I think you probably can. according to PEP541 the requirements for taking the name of another package are:

    the e-mail address on file in the user's profile on the Package Index;
    the e-mail address listed in the Author field for a given project uploaded to the Index; and
    any e-mail addresses found in the given project's documentation on the Index or on the listed Home Page.

The above will need to be action-ed and recorded before continuing, but I believe the rest of the requirements are met.

• owner not reachable (see Reachability above): Needs to be action-ed, see above.
• no releases within the past twelve months: There hasn't been a commit since 2013
• no activity from the owner on the project's home page (or no home page listed): Last comment was 2015 on Issue 1.

The requirements for taking over a project and replacing it with a new project (as would be desired in this case) are:

• the project has been determined abandoned by the rules described above: Yes, see above
• the candidate is able to demonstrate their own failed attempts to contact the existing owner: Would need to be action-ed as above.
• the candidate is able to demonstrate that the project suggested to reuse the name already exists and meets notability requirements: As the official AWS CLI it clearly exists and almost certainly meets notability requirements
  
  
  
  • the candidate is able to demonstrate why a fork under a different name is not an acceptable workaround: See issues referenced above and the specific issue noted in the background section.
  
  
  • download statistics on the Package Index for the existing package indicate project is not being used: This one may be harder, as I imagine lots of people are downloading accidentally, some conversation with the maintainers of the package index will probably be required here.
  
  
  • the maintainers of the Package Index don't have any additional reservations. - We'll have to wait and see
  
  

Unfortunately, I think this is something that will need to be done by the maintainers of aws-cli as co-ordination with the Package index and hosting a copy of the package under a different name (or, better, a redirect or something). I'm happy to help where I can, however.

Once the above contact attempts have been made and haven't gone through for the past 6 weeks, we can open an issue on the warehouse github page: https://github.com/pypa/warehouse/issues

Please let me know your thoughts on this. Though it doesn't seem major it's caught me out a few times, and I'm sure it does to plenty of others too.

[JordonPhillips]

This is something we're looking into internally, but the process can be slow sometimes.

[no-response[bot]]

This issue has been automatically closed because there has been no response to our request for more information from the original author. With only the information that is currently in the issue, we don't have enough information to take action. Please reach out if you have or find the answers we need so that we can investigate further.

[mfschmidt]

This remains a big issue if there's anything that can be done about it. It just bit me yesterday even though I've played this game before and should know better. I can't quite tell what response would have been appropriate to prevent the bot from closing this.

It also keeps coming up on SO here, here, and probably here, so it's not just ms-marcus and me.

[justnance]

@mfschmidt - Thanks for your feedback. I have reopened this issue and will escalate it internally.

[no-response[bot]]

This issue has been automatically closed because there has been no response to our request for more information from the original author. With only the information that is currently in the issue, we don't have enough information to take action. Please reach out if you have or find the answers we need so that we can investigate further.

[mattsb42-aws]

@JordonPhillips Noting here for contemplation: if it's more palatable to the PyPI folks, one option rather than making pip install aws install the AWS CLI would be to have it raise an error.

ex: https://pypi.org/project/awsencrpytion/
(generated by pypi-parker)

[gffhcks]

Has there been any update on this?

[geyang]

I have made a PEP 541 request here: https://github.com/pypa/pypi-support/issues/614