[Python-Dev] folding cElementTree behind ElementTree in 3.3

[Stefan Behnel]

"Martin v. Löwis", 10.02.2012 11:32:
>> What happens now? Do we give up on touching it until Fredrik Lundh
>> decides on a come-back or some person who is willing to commit 5 years
>> is found? Or do we just *keep* maintaining it in the stdlib as we do
>> with other modules, fixing bugs, tests, documentation and so on?
> 
> If we really can't find somebody dedicated to that code base enough,
> we should consider removing it from the standard library.

Well, that's totally not the current situation, though. There has been a
large amount of maintenance going into the ElementTree modules already, so
there is evidently a substantial interest in a) having them in the stdlib
and b) keeping them working well. The current decisions could easily be
taken by the interested parties, of which there seem to be enough involved
in the relevant python-dev threads so far. Note that even decisions taken
by a maintainer are not guaranteed to pass easily and without opposition.

On a related note, it may be worth mentioning that it's generally known for
several years now that the MiniDOM library has very serious performance
problems, and there doesn't seem to be any maintainer around who has made a
visible effort to solve them. Maybe we should remove MiniDOM from the
stdlib, because no-one seems to be dedicated to that code base enough to
fix it.

Stefan