[Python-Dev] folding cElementTree behind ElementTree in 3.3

[Eli Bendersky]

>> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net>
>> wrote:>
>> > It's not frozen, it's actually maintained.
>>
>> Indeed, it sounds like the most appropriate course (if we don't hear
>> otherwise from Fredrik) may be to just update PEP 360 to acknowledge
>> current reality (i.e. the most current release of ElementTree is
>> actually the one maintained by Florent in the stdlib).
>
>
> Actually, it was part of my learning curve to the development of Python, as
> you can see on the thread of the issue http://bugs.python.org/issue6472 .
> I spent some time between December 2009 and March 2010 to merge the
> "experimental" 1.3 in the standard library, both for 2.7 and 3.2.
> Upstream, there were 2 different test suites for the Python and the C
> implementation, but I merged them in a single test suite, and I've patched
> the C accelerator to conform to the same behaviour as the Python reference
> module.
> With the knowledge I acquired, I chased some other bugs related to
> ElementTree at the same time.
> With the feedback and some support coming from Antoine, Fredrik and Stefan
> we shaped a decent ElementTree 1.3 for the standard library.
>
> I am not aware of any effort to maintain the ElementTree package outside of
> the standard library since I did this merge.
> So, in the current state, we could consider the standard library package as
> the most up to date and stable version of ElementTree.
> I concur with Eli proposal to set the C accelerator as default : the test
> suite ensures that both implementations behave the same.
>
> I cannot commit myself for the long-term maintenance of ElementTree in the
> standard library, both because I don't have a strong interest in XML
> parsing, and because I have many other projects which keep me away from core
> python development for long period of times.
>
> However, I think it is a good thing if all the packages which are part of
> the standard library follow the same rules.
> We should try to find an agreement with Fredrik, explicit or implicit, which
> delegates the evolution and the maintenance of ElementTree to the Python
> community.
> IIRC, we have other examples in the standard library where the community
> support helped a lot to refresh a package where the original maintainer did
> not have enough time to pursue its work.
>

Thanks for the input, Florent. So, to paraphrase, there already are
code changes in the stdlib version of ET/cET which are not upstream.
You made it explicit about the tests, so the question is only left for
the modules themselves. Is that right?

Eli