Re: [Python-Dev] *** glibc detected *** gdb: malloc(): smallbin double linked list

2010-11-05 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Hi,

 I've compiled
 Python 2.7 (r27:82500, Nov  2 2010, 09:00:37)
 [GCC 4.4.3] on linux2

 with the following configure options
 ./configure --prefix=/home/john/local/python-dbg --with-pydebug

 I've installed numpy and some other packages but when I try to run my
 extension code under gdb I get the errors below. Does anyone have any
 ideas of how to track down what's happening here? I imagine I've
 misconfigured something somewhere. Is valgrind the answer?

 Thanks,
 John.

Hi John, the right place for asking such questions is the python
mailing list python-l...@python.org, please see
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

This python-dev list is for the development *of* python and not
development *with* python. For the latter python-list is the
appropriate forum.

Cheers,
Daniel



-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] adding new function

2010-06-22 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 how can i simply add new functions to module after its initialization
 (Py_InitModule())?  I'm missing something like
 PyModule_AddCFunction().

This type of question really belongs to python-list aka
comp.lang.python which I CC-d now. Please keep the discussion on that
list.

Cheers,
Daniel


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Draft PEP on RSON configuration file format

2010-03-01 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Finding .ini configuration files too limiting, JSON and XML to hard to
 manually edit

[snip]

 I call the new format RSON (for Readable Serial Object Notation),
 and it is designed to be a superset of JSON.

Quick question: if JSON is too hard to manually edit, how can RSON be
any easier when it is a *superset* of JSON?

Cheers,
Daniel


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 3146: Merge Unladen Swallow into CPython

2010-01-28 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
A question from someone writing C extension modules for python but not
involved in python-dev:

It has been said that compiling python with --without-llvm would not
include unladen swallow and would bypass llvm together with all C++.
Basically, as I understand it, --without-llvm gives the 'usual'
cpython we have today. Is this correct?

If this is correct, I still have one worry: since I wouldn't want to
touch the python install most linux distributions ship or most
windows/mac users install (or what MS/Apple ships) I will simply have
no choice than working with the python variant that is installed.

Is it anticipated that most linux distros and MS/Apple will ship the
python variant that comes with llvm/US? I suppose the goal of merging
llvm/US into python 3.x is this.

If this is the case then I, as a C extension author, will have no
choice than working with a python installation that includes llvm/US.
Which, as far as I undestand it, means dealing with C++ issues. Is
this correct? Or the same pure C extension module compiled with C-only
compilers would work with llvm-US-python and cpython?

Cheers,
Danil

-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 3146: Merge Unladen Swallow into CPython

2010-01-28 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 If this is the case then I, as a C extension author, will have no
 choice than working with a python installation that includes llvm/US.
 Which, as far as I undestand it, means dealing with C++ issues. Is
 this correct? Or the same pure C extension module compiled with C-only
 compilers would work with llvm-US-python and cpython?

 As a C extension author you will be fine (the source and linker
 interface will all still be C-only).

Thanks, that is good to hear!

Cheers,
Daniel

 C++ extension authors may need to care about making the version of the
 C++ runtime that they link against match that used internally by
 CPython/LLVM (although I'm a little unclear on that point myself).


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 3146: Merge Unladen Swallow into CPython

2010-01-28 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 A question from someone writing C extension modules for python

 I doubt that this will have any impact on C extension developers.


 If this is correct, I still have one worry: since I wouldn't want to
 touch the python install most linux distributions ship or most
 windows/mac users install (or what MS/Apple ships) I will simply have
 no choice than working with the python variant that is installed.

 Is it anticipated that most linux distros and MS/Apple will ship the
 python variant that comes with llvm/US? I suppose the goal of merging
 llvm/US into python 3.x is this.

 Depends on the distro. My guess is that they will likely provide both as
 separate packages

Yes, it's clear that various packages will be available but what I was
asking about is the default python version that gets installed if a
user installs a vanilla version of a particular linux distro. It's a
big difference for developers of C extension modules to say just
install this module and go or first download the python version
so-and-so and then install my module and go.

But as I understand from you and Nick, this will not be a problem for
C extension module authors.

 (unless one turns out to be clearly 'better'), and
 potentially even support their parallel installation. That's not
 unprecedented, just think of different JVM implementations (or even just
 different Python versions).


 If this is the case then I, as a C extension author, will have no
 choice than working with a python installation that includes llvm/US.
 Which, as far as I undestand it, means dealing with C++ issues.

 I don't think so. Replacing the eval loop has no impact on the C-API
 commonly used by binary extensions. It may have an impact on programs that
 embed the Python interpreter, but not the other way round.

 Remember that you usually don't have to compile the Python interpreter
 yourself. Once it's a binary, it doesn't really matter anymore in what
 language(s) it was originally written.

 Or the same pure C extension module compiled with C-only
 compilers would work with llvm-US-python and cpython?

 That's to be expected.

Okay, that's great, basically Nick confirmed the same thing.

Cheers,
Daniel

-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Pronouncement on PEP 389: argparse?

2010-01-04 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 If you're only concerned about 2.X, then yes, optparse will *never* be
 removed from 2.X. There will be a deprecation note in the 2.X
 documentation but deprecation warnings will only be issued when the -3
 flag is specified. Please see the Deprecation of optparse section of
 the PEP:

 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0389/#deprecation-of-optparse

 I do not think that optparse should be deprecated at. It is good at
 what it does and its limitations make its starting point less
 confusing for people with different backgrounds that Python.

 Compare:
 http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html
 http://argparse.googlecode.com/svn/tags/r101/doc/index.html

 argparse should be recommended as advanced and more featured variant
 of optparse - that goes without saying, but forcing people to switch
 and annoying them with deprecation messages brings only headache.

As has been noted already nobody is forcing people to switch. Optparse
will be available as a separate package and everybody will be free to
install it and will not have any deprecation messages anywhere.

 Just
 like optparse is better getopt, the latter could also be useful for
 people coming from other languages and porting their libraries to
 Python.

 I would better concentrate on real code examples how argparse solves
 problems and would really want to see
 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0389/#out-of-scope-various-feature-requests
 implemented until argparse enters phase where backward incompatible
 changes in API are impossible.

 I would prefer to see PEP 389 as a document describing proposed
 solutions to argument parsing problems rather than petition to replace
 one library with another. So, it should display common argument
 parsing scenarios (use cases) with examples that are also useful
 recipes for documentation. I guess more than 90% people here doesn't
 have time to read argparse methods descriptions to see what they could
 be useful for.



-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Sort out formatting differences in decimal and float

2009-12-05 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Sorry for being a curmudgeon, however...

  format(Decimal(1234), '020,g')
 '0,000,000,000,001,234'
  format(Decimal(1234), '0=20,g')
 '0001,234'

 Why in the world would you ever want to insert commas as separators and not
 use them consistently?

  format(Decimal('nan'), '020,g')
 ' NaN'
  format(Decimal('nan'), '0=20,g')
 '0NaN'

 Why in the world would you ever want to zero pad Nan (or Inf, for that
 matter)?

Because you didn't know in advance that the number ending up in your
format call was a nan (or inf)?

Cheers,
Daniel

 Stefan The advantage of decimal is that the user has the option to
 Stefan suppress commas. The behaviour of float is slightly easier to
 Stefan implement in C.

 Why?  If the user asked for them why would you want to suppress (some of)
 them?



-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Python Package Management Roadmap in Python Releases

2009-10-28 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 (*) Remember, however, that Tarek and work on Distribute, and also on
 bringing pieces of setuptools/Distribute functionality into distutils.

 But if that's the case then why not work on any third party tool..? like
 pip or setuptools?

 It seems are very longwinded process if the only way to work on
 python is to work on distutils but before doing that you have to
 first work on distribute and then wait for all the changes to work
 their way back up the chain..

 Actually, I have finally worked out what I want. That is shell support
 in the python windows distribution so that you can right click an
 .egg and install it.

 I don't see how that can be achieved by following the workprocess
 that you describe above.

As has been said by many, you are entirely welcome to work on whatever
tool you think is useful. Once you are done you are again welcome to
distribute your tool or application to users and see how many users
are happy with it. Once you are done with this step as well, you are
again encouraged to come back to python-dev and say:

In the last X months my app/tool became very popular in the python
community. There are Y developers working on the app/tool and there
are Z happy users. I'd suggest including it in the python stdlib or
I'd suggest coordinating the releases of my app/tool with that of
python.

At this point a useful conversation can start. Please note that a
similarly useful conversation is impossible to take place before all
the above steps have been completed.

HTH,
Daniel

-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] readonly __doc__

2009-10-22 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Speaking of the __doc__ property, I just noticed the following thing on
 py3k:

 class C: pass
 ...
 C.__doc__ = hop
 Traceback (most recent call last):
   File stdin, line 1, in module
 AttributeError: attribute '__doc__' of 'type' objects is not writable

Happens also with new style classes in python 2.x:

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Oct 30 2007, 13:45:26)
[GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)] on linux2
Type help, copyright, credits or license for more information.
 class C(object): pass
...
 C.__doc__ = 'hello'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File stdin, line 1, in module
AttributeError: attribute '__doc__' of 'type' objects is not writable



But not with old style classes:


Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Oct 30 2007, 13:45:26)
[GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)] on linux2
Type help, copyright, credits or license for more information.
 class C: pass
...
 C.__doc__ = 'hello'


Cheers,
Daniel

-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Distutils and Distribute roadmap (and some words on Virtualenv, Pip)

2009-10-12 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 My opinion is that this tool exists only because Python doesn't
 support the installation of multiple versions for the same
 distributions.

 This is not at all how I use virtualenv. For me virtualenv is a
 sandbox so that I don't have to become root whenever I need to install
 a Python package for testing purposes and to allow me to hop between
 sets of installed Python packages while developing on multiple Python
 projects. I also use it as a sandbox for build bots so that multiple
 bots on the same machine can each build their own projects with just
 the known dependencies installed.

+1

I also don't use virtualenv for supporting multiple versions, but
rather for sandboxing, testing and experimentation. To make sure that
an app works with the exact dependencies I think it should work with.
Also, it's important that the 'global' site-packages typically
requires root privileges while installing to a virtualenv doesn't.

Cheers,
Daniel

-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 3144 review.

2009-09-17 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 188 (check that, 190) people have downloaded the 2.0 release in the
 last week (numbers publicly available from the code.google.com). I
 can't tell you how many (if any) have downloaded it via svn.

 Downloading and using are not the same thing.

 Correct, but there is a strong positive correlation between the two.
 If you have a better method for determining what you would consider an
 appropriate level of usage, I'm all ears.

 A good way of determining the level of usage would be pointing to open
 source projects that are popular in the python community and which
 incorporate your module.

 well, the 2.0 release is still new. codesearch.google.com shows some
 projects using the 1.x release; hopefully some of those 200
 downloaders will put up some publicly indexable python code at some
 point.

I think one first needs to wait until this happens, I meana large user
base is formed, before a meaningful discussion can be done on whether
to include it in the stdlib or not. The long and largely academic
thread here I think illustrates this point. Without a large user base
it's up to anybody's gut feelings what is 'right' and what 'feels
wrong'.

Cheers,
Daniel


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 3144 review.

2009-09-15 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 188 (check that, 190) people have downloaded the 2.0 release in the
 last week (numbers publicly available from the code.google.com). I
 can't tell you how many (if any) have downloaded it via svn.

 Downloading and using are not the same thing.

 Correct, but there is a strong positive correlation between the two.
 If you have a better method for determining what you would consider an
 appropriate level of usage, I'm all ears.

A good way of determining the level of usage would be pointing to open
source projects that are popular in the python community and which
incorporate your module.

Cheers,
Daniel

-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] decorator module in stdlib?

2009-04-09 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Then perhaps you misunderstand the goal of the decorator module.
 The raison d'etre of the module is to PRESERVE the signature:
 update_wrapper unfortunately *changes* it.

 When confronted with a library which I do not not know, I often run
 over it pydoc, or sphinx, or a custom made documentation tool, to extract
 the
 signature of functions.

 Ah, I see. Personally I rarely trust automatically extracted
 documentation -- too often in my experience it is out of date or
 simply absent. Extracting the signatures in theory wouldn't lie, but
 in practice I still wouldn't trust it -- not only because of what
 decorators might or might not do, but because it might still be
 misleading. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to read the source
 code.

  For instance, if I see a method
 get_user(self, username) I have a good hint about what it is supposed
 to do. But if the library (say a web framework) uses non
 signature-preserving
 decorators, my documentation tool says to me that there is function
 get_user(*args, **kwargs) which frankly is not enough [this is the
 optimistic case, when the author of the decorator has taken care
 to preserve the name of the original function].

 But seeing the decorator is often essential for understanding what
 goes on! Even if the decorator preserves the signature (in truth or
 according inspect), many decorators *do* something, and it's important
 to know how a function is decorated. For example, I work a lot with a
 small internal framework at Google whose decorators can raise
 exceptions and set instance variables; they also help me understand
 under which conditions a method can be called.

  I *hate* losing information about the true signature of functions, since
 I also
 use a lot IPython, Python help, etc.

 I guess we just have different styles. That's fine.

 I must admit that while I still like decorators, I do like them as
 much as in the past.

 Of course there was a missing NOT in this sentence, but you all understood
 the intended meaning.

 (All this BTW is not to say that I don't trust you with commit
 privileges if you were to be interested in contributing. I just don't
 think that adding that particular decorator module to the stdlib would
 be wise. It can be debated though.)

 Fine. As I have repeated many time that particular module was never
 meant for inclusion in the standard library.

 Then perhaps it shouldn't -- I haven't looked but if you don't plan
 stdlib inclusion it is often the case that the API style and/or
 implementation details make stdlib inclusion unrealistic. (Though
 admittedly some older modules wouldn't be accepted by today's
 standards either -- and I'm not just talking PEP-8 compliance! :-)

 But I feel strongly about
 the possibility of being able to preserve (not change!) the function
 signature.

 That could be added to functools if enough people want it.

My original suggestion for inclusion in stdlib was motivated by this
reason alone: I'd like to see an official one way of preserving
function signatures by decorators. If there are better ways of doing
it than the decorator module, that's totally fine, but there should be
one.


Cheers,
Daniel

 I do not think everybody disagree with your point here. My point still
 stands, though: objects should not lie about their signature, especially
 during  debugging and when generating documentation from code.

 Source code never lies. Debuggers should make access to the source
 code a key point. And good documentation should be written by a human,
 not automatically cobbled together from source code and a few doc
 strings.




-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


[Python-Dev] decorator module in stdlib?

2009-04-06 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
The decorator module [1] written by Michele Simionato is a very useful
tool for maintaining function signatures while applying a decorator.
Many different projects implement their own versions of the same
functionality, for example turbogears has its own utility for this, I
guess others do something similar too.

Was the issue whether to include this module in the stdlib raised? If
yes, what were the arguments against it? If not, what do you folks
think, shouldn't it be included? I certainly think it should be.

Originally I sent this message to c.l.p [2] and Michele suggested it
be brought up on python-dev. He also pointed out that a PEP [3] is
already written about this topic and it is in draft form.

What do you guys think, wouldn't this be a useful addition to functools?

Cheers,
Daniel

[1] http://pypi.python.org/pypi/decorator
[2] 
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d4056023f1150fe0
[3] http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0362/


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Core projects for Summer of Code

2009-03-18 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Hey guys/gals

 Summer of Code is ramping up.  Every year the common complaint is that not
 enough Python core projects get proposed by students, and of course a big
 reason for that is often the only encouragement we offer prospective
 students is a link to the PEP index.

 So let's make this year different.

 Accepted students are paid a total of $4500 to work for roughly 30 hours a
 week, 12 weeks, on their proposed project.

 The challenge is finding project ideas for them that could reasonably occupy
 them for the entire Summer and which the results of their work can be
 demonstrated.  They're being paid for specific projects so Spend the Summer
 fixing bugs on the tracker is a no-go, and Google has outlined that Summer
 of Code is about code, not documentation.

 I've seen and heard that a lot of work is still needed on
 http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk both during the 3.1 release cycle,
 optimization possible all over the place.  It'd be great if those of you
 working closely with this can shout out some ideas, brainstorm a bit.

 PSF was announced as one of the mentoring orgs today, this week before
 student applications are open is for students to talk to their prospective
 mentors and iron out the wrinkles in their plans, so there's not much time
 to get core project ideas together.

How about porting PIL to 3.0?
There were many such requests on python-list and image-sig (including mine :))

Cheers,
Daniel


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Core projects for Summer of Code

2009-03-18 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Summer of Code is ramping up.  Every year the common complaint is that
 not
 enough Python core projects get proposed by students, and of course a big
 reason for that is often the only encouragement we offer prospective
 students is a link to the PEP index.

 So let's make this year different.

 Accepted students are paid a total of $4500 to work for roughly 30 hours
 a
 week, 12 weeks, on their proposed project.

 The challenge is finding project ideas for them that could reasonably
 occupy
 them for the entire Summer and which the results of their work can be
 demonstrated.  They're being paid for specific projects so Spend the
 Summer
 fixing bugs on the tracker is a no-go, and Google has outlined that
 Summer
 of Code is about code, not documentation.

 I've seen and heard that a lot of work is still needed on
 http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk both during the 3.1 release
 cycle,
 optimization possible all over the place.  It'd be great if those of you
 working closely with this can shout out some ideas, brainstorm a bit.

 PSF was announced as one of the mentoring orgs today, this week before
 student applications are open is for students to talk to their
 prospective
 mentors and iron out the wrinkles in their plans, so there's not much
 time
 to get core project ideas together.

 How about porting PIL to 3.0?
 There were many such requests on python-list and image-sig (including mine
 :))


 I have ported it to the stage where its tests passes (which are far
 from covering all the code) and some of my own tests, there is a git
 repo on the image-sig that points to it. I wasn't really careful with
 some of the things (and I would even consider redoing some of them),
 but only one or two people got a copy of it so apparently people don't
 want/need it on python 3.0 just yet (not it alone at least).

I did a git clone git://gpolo.ath.cx/pil-py3k.git but it failed:

gpolo.ath.cx[0: 189.7.18.241]: errno=Connection timed out
fatal: unable to connect a socket (Connection timed out)
fetch-pack from 'git://gpolo.ath.cx/pil-py3k.git' failed.

By the way the reason I think few people checked it out is that people
mostly are waiting for an official PIL release that is known to be
stable. Did you try making your port part of the official PIL
distribution?

Cheers,
Daniel


-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com


Re: [Python-Dev] Core projects for Summer of Code

2009-03-18 Thread Daniel Fetchinson
 Summer of Code is ramping up.  Every year the common complaint is that
 not
 enough Python core projects get proposed by students, and of course a
 big
 reason for that is often the only encouragement we offer prospective
 students is a link to the PEP index.

 So let's make this year different.

 Accepted students are paid a total of $4500 to work for roughly 30
 hours
 a
 week, 12 weeks, on their proposed project.

 The challenge is finding project ideas for them that could reasonably
 occupy
 them for the entire Summer and which the results of their work can be
 demonstrated.  They're being paid for specific projects so Spend the
 Summer
 fixing bugs on the tracker is a no-go, and Google has outlined that
 Summer
 of Code is about code, not documentation.

 I've seen and heard that a lot of work is still needed on
 http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk both during the 3.1 release
 cycle,
 optimization possible all over the place.  It'd be great if those of
 you
 working closely with this can shout out some ideas, brainstorm a bit.

 PSF was announced as one of the mentoring orgs today, this week before
 student applications are open is for students to talk to their
 prospective
 mentors and iron out the wrinkles in their plans, so there's not much
 time
 to get core project ideas together.

 How about porting PIL to 3.0?
 There were many such requests on python-list and image-sig (including
 mine
 :))


 I have ported it to the stage where its tests passes (which are far
 from covering all the code) and some of my own tests, there is a git
 repo on the image-sig that points to it. I wasn't really careful with
 some of the things (and I would even consider redoing some of them),
 but only one or two people got a copy of it so apparently people don't
 want/need it on python 3.0 just yet (not it alone at least).

 I did a git clone git://gpolo.ath.cx/pil-py3k.git but it failed:

 gpolo.ath.cx[0: 189.7.18.241]: errno=Connection timed out
 fatal: unable to connect a socket (Connection timed out)
 fetch-pack from 'git://gpolo.ath.cx/pil-py3k.git' failed.


 Thanks for noticing that, maybe more people had this same problem
 then, I will consider using github or some similar service (or maybe
 take the chance to bazaar, or mercurial, or svn, or..).

 By the way the reason I think few people checked it out is that people
 mostly are waiting for an official PIL release that is known to be
 stable. Did you try making your port part of the official PIL
 distribution?


 I have talked with Fredrik, he said he would be running it on another
 test suite to check how much of it really works. But, no, I didn't
 really try pushing it to be integrated into the next PIL release and
 it also wouldn't be possible without distributing a py3k version only
 -- I didn't do the port with the ability to work in python 3.x and
 python 2.x but this can be arranged.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but I didn't mean to say that this
version should work on both python 2.x and python 3.x. Ideally, there
would be a PIL distribution for 2.x only and another one for 3.x only.
The only thing is that people (myself included) will only be
comfortable with the PIL for 3.x version if it comes with the
blessings of Fredrik, i.e. if I were you I'd try pushing this with
Fredrik. After all if all tests pass including the ones Fredrik has
for himself, there should be no problem and I suppose he would be
happy to have a PIL for python 3.x.

Until then I'd be happy to check out your own port, whenever you have
a working repository copy please let us know.

Cheers,
Daniel

-- 
Psss, psss, put it down! - http://www.cafepress.com/putitdown
___
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe: 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com