bpo-43926: Cleaner metadata with PEP 566 JSON support. (GH-25565)

* bpo-43926: Cleaner metadata with PEP 566 JSON support.

* Add blurb

* Add versionchanged and versionadded declarations for changes to metadata.

* Use descriptor for PEP 566

1 files changed, 29 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Lib/importlib/metadata/_meta.py b/Lib/importlib/metadata/_meta.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04d9a02
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Lib/importlib/metadata/_meta.py
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+from typing import Any, Dict, Iterator, List, Protocol, TypeVar, Union
+
+
+_T = TypeVar("_T")
+
+
+class PackageMetadata(Protocol):
+    def __len__(self) -> int:
+        ...  # pragma: no cover
+
+    def __contains__(self, item: str) -> bool:
+        ...  # pragma: no cover
+
+    def __getitem__(self, key: str) -> str:
+        ...  # pragma: no cover
+
+    def __iter__(self) -> Iterator[str]:
+        ...  # pragma: no cover
+
+    def get_all(self, name: str, failobj: _T = ...) -> Union[List[Any], _T]:
+        """
+        Return all values associated with a possibly multi-valued key.
+        """
+
+    @property
+    def json(self) -> Dict[str, Union[str, List[str]]]:
+        """
+        A JSON-compatible form of the metadata.
+        """