On Sat, Apr 07, 2018 at 09:30:05AM +0100, Paul Moore wrote: > On 7 April 2018 at 04:13, Steve Dower <steve.do...@python.org> wrote: > > Better to deprecate it before it becomes broken, in my opinion.
That argument could be applied to everything in the std lib. > > Having someone willing and able to review and merge changes is the best > > criteria for whether a module is still supported or not. I don't think "best" is justified -- and certainly it is not the *only* criteria. Modules can become stable simply because they have no known bugs and no new feature requests. Stable doesn't mean useless, and the urge to consider anything that isn't being regularly fiddled with as "obsolete" is a tendency to be resisted. If the module isn't broken, there's no need to fix it. That's a GOOD thing, not a reason to dump a perfectly good, useful, working module. Raymond has stated that he is happy to work on it if there are any bugs reported on it, and if he's not available, I'm sure somebody will. And if not, well, we don't have any sort of performance guarantees on fixes: sooner or later, *somebody* will provide a patch. That's the beauty of the Open Source model. There are plenty of potential upstream contributors who could contribute a patch. > I think there's a difference between not being willing to add > enhancements, and not fixing bugs. The issue that originally triggered > this discussion was an enhancement request, and I don't think it's > unreasonable to declare cmd as "stable - no further enhancements will > be made or accepted" while still considering it as supported for > bugfixes. Its not an unreasonable position to take, but I don't think it is justified in this case. The cmd module is not something so arcane or complicated that it requires a specialist to maintain it. Its about 400 lines, including blank lines and doc strings, with a single class and around twenty methods. Wasn't one of the major reasons for moving to git and Github to make it easier for non-core devs to contribute? A module as stable and simple as cmd seems to me to be the ideal place for people to begin contributing, whether it is fixing bugs or contributing any (hypothetical) feature enhancements. I don't think we need do anything here: so long as there is a core developer willing to review any PRs, and so long as new enhancements go through the same approval process on the bug tracker and/or Python- Ideas, I don't think we need to single cmd out as deprecated or "no new features". This isn't gopher, or something with serious unfixable security vulnerabilities. It works. What more needs to be said? -- Steve _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
