[Python-3000] PEP: Cleaning out sys and the "interpreter" module

[Brett Cannon]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Benjamin Peterson
>  <musiccomposition at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 4:45 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>  > > -0.5 from me. For half of the names that the PEP proposes to move most
>  > > users wouldn't be able to guess in which module to find them.
>
>  > If they're in *one* (maybe two; we'll see.) other module, it'd be hard to
>  > guess where they are? At the top of the sys docs, we'll put "sys: Generic
>  > Python interpreter services. For CPython specific tools, see the cpython
>  > module" I don't see why people have to be able to "guess" where a given
>  > object is. (It should be reasonably placed, of course.)
>
>  Yes, it will be hard, because most CPython users have no idea what
>  other Python implementations can or cannot do.
>
>  E.g. i was surprised to learn that Jython doesn't support a recursion
>  limit, or that frame objects are not universal (in fact I think *you*
>  are mistaken there).
>

But I am pretty sure IronPython does not support frames access.

>  OTOH I would guess that "executable" may not be meaningful in Jython,
>  as you'd have to invoke the JVM first. Other examples: I'm not at all
>  sure that all Python implementations should be expected to support
>  tracing and profiling. And I don't get why builtin_module_names can't
>  be universal.

Perhaps we should start this with a discussion of what exactly other
VMs are expected to implement? At the bare minimum this can be
documented in the sys documentation even if no new module is created
or certain attributes are moved.

I will start a new thread for this.

-Brett