On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:06:09 +0200, Stefan Behnel
That's what makes the PEP feel so unfair to CPython developers, because they are the ones who carry most of the burden of maintaining the stdlib in the first place, and who will most likely continue to carry it, because other implementations will continue to be occupied with their own core development for another while or two. It is nice to read that other implementations are contributing back patches that simplify their own reuse of the stdlib code. However, that does not yet make them equal contributors to the development and the maintenance of the stdlib, and is of very little worth to the CPython project. It often even runs counter to the interest of CPython itself.
So, the PEP makes the burden worse in that it requires that someone who works on a module with a C accelerator must make sure that any existing Python version and the C version stay in sync, and that *anyone* who wants to introduce a new module into the stdlib must make sure it has a Python version if that is practical. IMO both of these are policies that make sense for CPython even aside from the existence of other implementations: Python is easier to read and understand, so where practical we should provide a Python version of any module in the stdlib, for the benefit of CPython users. It doesn't sound like a great burden to me, but I'm not really qualified to judge, since I don't generally work on C code. Also, could you expand on "It often even runs counter to the interest of CPython itself"? I'm not seeing that, unless you are talking about the parameter-binding micro-optimization, which I think we discourage these days anyway.
I think this social problem of the PEP can only be solved if the CPython project stops doing the major share of the stdlib maintenance, thus freeing its own developer capacities to focus on CPython related improvements and optimisations, just like the other implementations currently do. I'm not sure we want that at this point.
Personally, I consider myself an stdlib maintainer: I only occasionally dabble in C code when fixing bugs that annoy me for some reason. I suppose that's why I'm one of the people backing this PEP. I think there are other CPython developers who might say the same thing. -- R. David Murray http://www.bitdance.com