Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org>:
I have now re-read that discussion; it's in the archives starting this message:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-August/016629.html
As have I. All the stuff in this thread was before the checkin; you were in fact mistaken about the timing of most of the discussion.
No, I was not mistaken about the timing; you must have misunderstood what I said about the timing. When I posted the URL for this thread this afternoon, I knew that it took place before your checkin. I did not see evidence either in the mailing list or in the code that you took any of the advice though.
There were several suggestions to merge it with fileinput and some suggestions to restructure it. You seem to have ignored these except the criticism on the name "ccframe" (by choosing an even worse name :-).
I did not ignore these suggestions (one that I took was Greg Ward's suggestion that, after all, just throwing an exception was the right thing). And I was in fact planning to merge this thing with fileinput.
Then I looked as what would have to be done to the documentation of fileinput -- in fact, I edited together a combined fileinput documentation page. The result was a mess that convinced me that this does indeed need to be a separate module. There wasn't enough coherence between the old fileinput stuff and my entry points to even make the *documentation* look like a logical unit, let alone the code.
So, as a matter of process, you should not have checked it in without coming back to the list with your experience.
What is going on here? Is it possible that you are mistaken about the timing of the checkin, and that what you thought was discussion afterwards was discussion before? Or am I somehow missing listmail?
Your mail was probably broken -- it wouldn't be the first time :-(.
In the event, my mail was not broken.
There are two posts in the archives that start with a quote from the checkin mail:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-August/017131.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-August/017132.html
Right...one of which completely misses the point by suggesting that this is a filter framework, and the other one of which is a "me too" basically addressing the naming issue. Guido, you are yourself *notorious* for dismissing naming issues with "that's unimportant" and "we can fix it later". How can you criticize me for doing likewise?
I am criticizing you for not responding at all to the feedback -- whether it was mistaken or not. That's another violation of process. Why is suggesting it is a filtering framework completely missing the point? If this is not a filter framework, WHAT IS IT?
As for process issues...I agree that we need better procedures and criteria for what goes into the library. As you know I've made a start on developing same, but my understanding has been that *you* don't think you'll have the bandwidth for it until 2.2 is out.
That's not an excuse for you to check in random bits of code.
So what, exactly, makes this 'random'?
That, Guido, is not a rhetorical question. We don't have any procedures. We don't have any guidelines. We don't have any history of anything but discussing submissions on python-dev before somebody with commit access checks them in. If no -1 votes and the judgment of somebody with commit privileges who has already got a lot of stuff in the library is not sufficient, *what is*?
Absence of -1 votes is not enough. I didn't see any +1 votes -- just suggestions to try a different tack. I happened to be too busy at the time you checked this in to weigh in, but I had a big -1 in my head which I thought was reflected by other comments. Eric, I respect you as a person, but as a Python developer, I don't trust your judgement enough to let you check stuff in without a clear green light from me.
I'm not trying to be difficult here, but this points at a weakness in our way of doing things. I want to play nice, but I can't if I don't know your actual rules. I don't know what *would* have been sufficient if what I did was not. I don't think anyone else does, either.
Everybody else who doesn't know the rules for sure starts a discussion, either here or on the patch manager. You are the only one of the 30+ committers who *repeatedly* commits controversial stuff. I'm not saying that the rules are clear enough (they clearly aren't if even you don't get them), but I think there's a better way to get clarity than by acting like a bull in a china cabinet.
Some comments on the code:
This is the sort of critique I was looking for two weeks ago, not a bunch of bikeshedding about how the thing should be named.
I'll respond to this later. First I want you to be clear on the process: commit privileges are not to be used to force an issue. (Admin privileges will be used to force an issue if necessary. :-) --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)