On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:06:09 +0200, Stefan Behnel <stefan...@behnel.de> wrote: > That's what makes the PEP feel so unfair to CPython developers, because > they are the ones who carry most of the burden of maintaining the stdlib in > the first place, and who will most likely continue to carry it, because > other implementations will continue to be occupied with their own core > development for another while or two. It is nice to read that other > implementations are contributing back patches that simplify their own reuse > of the stdlib code. However, that does not yet make them equal contributors > to the development and the maintenance of the stdlib, and is of very little > worth to the CPython project. It often even runs counter to the interest of > CPython itself.
So, the PEP makes the burden worse in that it requires that someone who works on a module with a C accelerator must make sure that any existing Python version and the C version stay in sync, and that *anyone* who wants to introduce a new module into the stdlib must make sure it has a Python version if that is practical. IMO both of these are policies that make sense for CPython even aside from the existence of other implementations: Python is easier to read and understand, so where practical we should provide a Python version of any module in the stdlib, for the benefit of CPython users. It doesn't sound like a great burden to me, but I'm not really qualified to judge, since I don't generally work on C code. Also, could you expand on "It often even runs counter to the interest of CPython itself"? I'm not seeing that, unless you are talking about the parameter-binding micro-optimization, which I think we discourage these days anyway. > I think this social problem of the PEP can only be solved if the CPython > project stops doing the major share of the stdlib maintenance, thus freeing > its own developer capacities to focus on CPython related improvements and > optimisations, just like the other implementations currently do. I'm not > sure we want that at this point. Personally, I consider myself an stdlib maintainer: I only occasionally dabble in C code when fixing bugs that annoy me for some reason. I suppose that's why I'm one of the people backing this PEP. I think there are other CPython developers who might say the same thing. -- R. David Murray http://www.bitdance.com _______________________________________________ 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