On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:55:31 -0400, Karl Knechtel wrote: > Hello all, > > While attempting to make a wrapper for opening multiple types of > UTF-encoded files (more on that later, in a separate post, I guess), I > ran into some oddities with the `codecs` module, specifically to do with > `.register` ing `CodecInfo` objects. I'd like to report a bug or > something, but there are several intertangled issues here and I'm not > really sure how to report it so I thought I'd open the discussion. > Apologies in advance if I get a bit rant-y, and a warning that this is > fairly long. [...]
Yes, it's a strangely indirect API, and yes it looks like you have identified a whole bucket full of problems with it. And no, I don't know why that API was chosen. Changing to a cleaner, more direct (sensible?) API would be a fairly big step. If you want to pursue this, the steps I recommend you take are: 1) understanding the reason for the old API (search the Internet and particularly the python-...@python.org archives); 2) have a plan for how to avoid breaking code that relies on the existing API; 3) raise the issue on python-id...@python.org to gather feedback and see how much opposition or support it is likely to get; they'll suggest whether a bug report is sufficient or if you'll need a PEP; http://www.python.org/dev/peps/ If you can provide a patch and a test suite, you will have a much better chance of pushing it through. If not, you are reliant on somebody else who can being interested enough to do the work. And one last thing: any new functionality will simply *not* be considered for Python 2.x. Aim for Python 3.4, since the 2.x series is now in bug- fix only maintenance mode and the 3.3 beta is no longer accepting new functionality, only bug fixes. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
