[JacobCoffee]

PEP440 does not contain a limit. Can we please add one?

things like https://pypi.org/project/uselesscapitalquiz/ happen without it, and other issues arise not least of which is user a11y related to trying to fit/show all of the wild versioning

stats from pypi:
we have 9.9mm releases, median version is 5 characters, 99th percentil is 20, and maximal is 217(!!)

I propose a 128 char cap, 100 would affect ~9 current releases some releases in the last months with ~110-115 char versioning which I honestly don't understand but... whatever! 128 is fine.

If you'd like to be restrictive, 32 or 64 would be nicer to handle from a designer/UI perspective.

 ┌──────────────┬───────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ Proposed cap │ Stored versions exceeding cap │ PEP 440-valid normalized versions exceeding cap │
 ├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ 32           │ 323                           │ 128                                             │
 ├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ 64           │ 119                           │ 12                                              │
 ├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ 100          │ 9                             │ 9                                               │
 ├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ 128          │ 2                             │ 2                                               │
 └──────────────┴───────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I am not certain on an edit being required to the PEP itself, I think adding a practical limit on PyPI regardless is possible but I would prefer to have it codified.

refs:

• No Constraint on Version Names Can Cause Issues pypi/warehouse#12483
• Version metadata field size limits pypi/warehouse#14965
• https://discuss.python.org/t/amend-pep440-to-limit-version-identifiers/109629

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📚 Documentation preview 📚: https://python-packaging-user-guide--2163.org.readthedocs.build/en/2163/

[notatallshaw]

Changes and clarifications to the spec are discussed first at https://discuss.python.org/c/packaging/14

After agreement, either clarifications are opened here or a PEP process is followed.

[JacobCoffee]

@notatallshaw Sure, i'll do that. i was directed here when asking how a change like this should be brought up