[Soc2006] LispNYC/PSF joint project

[Carl Friedrich Bolz]

2006/5/8, Ryan Forsythe <ryanf at cs.uoregon.edu>:
> James Tauber wrote:
> > I am interested in being the PSF-side mentor for this but I am
> > interested to know what particular support you are looking for on the
> > Python side (or overall). In other words, what do you see as the gaps
> > between what you know and what you need to know to succeed that you are
> > looking to a mentor to help you with. General Python guidance? Specific
> > guidance in certain areas? If it's just general support and guidance
> > about running open source projects in general, that's fine too, and I'm
> > more than willing to provide that.
>
> On the Python side, I'd say my biggest gap is the gap between
> researching a topic (in this case, metaclasses) and practicing it.
> Playing in ipython and using them in a big package are two very
> different things. So help with the deep voodoo, if I need to get into
> it, would be good. On the general help side, I'd guess I'd need help
> with designing a good API  for this thing. And yes, this would be the
> first public, open-source project I've managed; I'm sure it'll be a bit
> different than managing 4 classmates in my software methodology class :)

What I really don't see is why this has to be implemented with
metaclasses. Sure, Ken seems to have that idea, but there might be
different approaches. For example, I keep thinking that some sort of
placeholder class might be useable for this -- see the following
thread on python-dev:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-February/060350.html

Such a placeholder class would probably also provide a sufficient
amount of introspection to determine the dependencies between the
attributes.

Cheers,

Carl Friedrich Bolz