On 3/19/06, John J Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, Brett Cannon wrote: > > > On 3/17/06, A.M. Kuchling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Thought: We should drop all of httplib, urllib, urllib2, and ftplib, > >> and instead adopt some third-party library for HTTP/FTP/whatever, > >> write a Python wrapper, and use it instead. (The only such library I > [...] > > But maybe this also poses a larger question of where for Py3K we want > > to take the stdlib. Ignoring its needed cleanup and nesting of the > > namespace, do we want to try to use more external tools by importing > > them and writing a Pythonic wrapper? Or do we want to not do that and > > try to keep more things under our control and go with the status quo? > > Or do we want to really prune down the stdlib and use more dynamic > > downloading ala Cheeseshop and setuptools? > [...] > > Do we have any idea yet what sort of timescale we're talking about for > Python 3.0 (or should I call it Py3K still)? >
Py3K. It's shorter and since Python 3.0 is still just a PEP and Guido's neurons it really has not materalized yet to be an upcoming version of Python yet. =) > I have a personal interest in these particular modules, but the questions > that seem to need answering first are more general ones about the stdlib > post-3.0. Brett asks some good questions. > > ISTM that another important question must be: What do each of the small > set of people like yourself (Brett), Andrew, Martin, Georg, Raymond > (etc.!) who bear most of the burden of maintaining the stdlib at present, > intend to do after Python 3.0 is out? I assume that it would only be > useful to drop parts of the stdlib in this way if that group of people > were then to stop working on them. That makes sense, but I don't want to > make assumptions about what each of the group of people referred to above > intend to do post-3.0: > > a. Drop 2.x right away to concentrate on developing and maintaining the > 3.0 stdlib (and/or the 3.0 interpreter)? > > b. Spend at least some effort maintaining 2.x for a few years? > > c. Carry on maintaining 2.x for a few years? > > d. Ignore 3.x and continue with 2.x indefinitely? > > e. Watch and see how the Python community at large responds to 3.0? > > f. Wait and see what you feel like doing at the time? > > g. Some combination of the above? > > h. Quit Python to take up pig farming? > Py3K will most likely be just another release of Python with a lot of changes. The final 2.x release will be maintained for a while just because we always maintain the last stable release while the next version is being developed. But since the 2.x series will be depended upon by people for quite a while I suspect we will continue to patch it and release it as long as Anthony is willing to do micro releases and developers plan to continue to backport fixes. Personally, I plan to help to maintain the 2.x series, but once Python 3.0 becomes a reality, it won't be my focus. One would hope that bugs in the 2.x series will get closed up over time and will require less and less maintenance. But backporting might be a problem from 3.x to 2.x because of fundamental differences of how things are structured on top of people just losing interest in 2.x since it isn't bleeding edge. > > These sorts of questions are often quite hard to answer, I understand, > because many people often want to see what everybody else will do before > making up their minds. But I guess people who post here frequently are > less likely to do that than are the rest of us sheep ;-) > > [BTW, I assume much of the stdlib will remain essentially the same (if not > without backwards-incompatibilities), one hopes people will step in to > backport 3.0 fixes (and perhaps forward-port: I make no judgement about > which of 2.x and 3.x will have the larger user community in the short or > long term). People will presumably be more motivated to do that than > currently, since I assume many people will not port all (or any) of their > code to 3.0.] > Well, I don't know if the stdlib will stay the same. It will definitely get pruned down and cleaned up (wouldn't be shocked if we have a Great Renaming like the C codebase did way back in the day). So I have no clue where the stdlib will go compared to 2.x . -Brett _______________________________________________ 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
