Should box be able to handle projects that do not use a pyproject.toml file?

[trappitsch]

Currently, box requires a PEP 621 compliant pyproject.toml file. This limits the usability for other projects. It would be very nice if we could support these projects as well.

Idea:

• Allow for a box.toml file as an alternative to write the box configuration into the existing pyproject.toml file.
• Use box.toml prioritized over pyproject.toml, if it exists
• A box.toml could hold more information that can be automatically stitched together from other, non PEP 621 compliant projects.

[trappitsch]

Thinking a lot and hard about this, I'm not sure I want to support this at the moment for the following reasons:

• The packaging recommendation states "The configuration file depends on the tool used to create the build artifacts. The standard practice is to use a pyproject.toml file in the TOML format." More and more packages are migrating to the wonderful pyproject.toml workflow, so it doesn't seem necessary at the moment.
• I personally don't have a use case for it.

Turning this from an issue / enhancement proposal into a discussion. It would be great to hear more voices.