On 07.07.12 04:56, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
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.
This API was chosen for backwards compatibility reasons when incremental
encoders/decoders were introduced (in 2006).
And yes: We missed the opportunity to clean that up to always use CodecInfo.
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);
See e.g. http://mail.python.org/pipermail/patches/2006-March/019122.html
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.
Servus,
Walter
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