Mark PEP 778 deferred

emmatyping · emmatyping · commit 1ed60b5f1568 · 2025-07-03T12:03:40.000-07:00
diff --git a/peps/pep-0778.rst b/peps/pep-0778.rst
@@ -1,13 +1,15 @@
 PEP: 778
 Title: Supporting Symlinks in Wheels
-Author: Ethan Smith <ethan@ethanhs.me>
+Author: Emma Harper Smith <emma@python.org>
 Sponsor: Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org>
 PEP-Delegate: Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com>
-Status: Draft
+Discussions-To: https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-778-supporting-symlinks-in-wheels/53824
+Status: Deferred
 Type: Standards Track
 Topic: Packaging
 Requires: 777
 Created: 18-May-2024
+Post-History: `10-Oct-2024 <https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-778-supporting-symlinks-in-wheels/53824>`__
 
 Abstract
 ========
@@ -17,6 +19,21 @@ installed. To properly handle distributing libraries in wheels, we propose a new
 metadata file to handle symlinks in a platform portable manner. This specification requires
 a new wheel major version, discussed in :pep:`777`.
 
+PEP Defferal
+============
+
+This PEP has been deferred until a better compatibility story for major changes to the wheel
+format is established. Once a compatibility story is established for wheels which allows backwards
+incompatible behavior in an unobtrusive way, the following points should be addressed in this PEP:
+
+- Re-focus topic to just symliinks for shared libraries on Unix platforms. Perhaps tie to
+  platform tags?
+- Should the symlinks be materialized as file attributes in the archive or a ``LINKS`` file?
+  Could it be encoded in ``RECORD``?
+- Clarify that this PEP is insufficient to be useful for PEP 660 editable installs since it will no
+  longer be cross platform.
+- Describe fallback behavior in instances where symlinks are unavailable on Unix platforms.
+
 Motivation
 ==========
 
