Accepting PEP 434, Idle Enhancement Exception
I am accepting Todd Rovito's and Terry Reedy's PEP 434, officially declaring IDLE to be an application bundled with Python, with the contents of "Lib/idlelib" exempt from the usual "no new features in maintenance releases" rule. As stated in the PEP, this isn't carte blanche to do major rewrites in maintenance releases, merely acknowledgement that, when in doubt, we better serve our users by treating IDLE as a bundled application and making it behave consistently across all supported versions than we do by treating it as a library first and an application second. Hopefully this clarification, and the stated goal of supporting IDLE as a high quality cross-platform default starting point for new Python users that aren't already accustomed to the command line and editing text files directly, will make it easier for the IDLE developers to focus on making IDLE excel at that task. Regards, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall@gmail.com>wrote:
Does that mean that mainstream idle development should move out of the python tree?
No the acceptance of PEP-434 does not mean IDLE development should move out of the python tree. The acceptance of PEP-434 means that the restriction on applying enhancements be relaxed for IDLE code residing in ../Lib/idlelib. In other words Python Core Developers can apply enhancements (but not major rewrites) even to the 2.7 branch. The relaxation was requested in the hope that we can apply many of the already existing patches quickly and allow IDLE to become a high quality cross-platform default starting point for new Python users that aren't already accustomed to the command line and editing text files directly. PEP-434 doesn't suggest moving the IDLE code outside of the Python tree. Please let me know if you have additional questions, feel free to help us with IDLE development!
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 12:40 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall@gmail.com> wrote:
That will ultimately be up to the IDLE developers. However, I don't expect it to happen any time soon, as remaining in the CPython repo allows them to easily re-use the existing buildbot fleet as they try to build out a decent test suite, and also means they don't have to spend their time working out a completely new development workflow rather than working on IDLE as it exists now. Past experience also suggests that maintaining things in the CPython repo and cutting periodic external releases (if the IDLE developers ever choose to do that) works a *lot* better than trying to periodically reintegrate an externally maintained tool. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
Having a standalone version of IDLE might be really useful to alternative Python implementations.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 5:26 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net> wrote:
I don't think it's worth discussing - tkinter does not work on any other implementation than CPython and it seems it won't work. It's a bit pity, but I guess if I felt really bad about it, I should just make it work. PS. are there idle projects in SoC? Maybe we should put a more pypy-friendly one there too? Cheers, fijal
On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Simon Cross <hodgestar+pythondev@gmail.com
wrote:
Having a standalone version of IDLE might be really useful to alternative Python implementations.
I suspect it's too hard. I remember seeing some work on "anygui.py" that looked like an attempt to make these sorts of things work across various windowing platforms, but I don't think it made it very far. -Frank
On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall@gmail.com>wrote:
Does that mean that mainstream idle development should move out of the python tree?
No the acceptance of PEP-434 does not mean IDLE development should move out of the python tree. The acceptance of PEP-434 means that the restriction on applying enhancements be relaxed for IDLE code residing in ../Lib/idlelib. In other words Python Core Developers can apply enhancements (but not major rewrites) even to the 2.7 branch. The relaxation was requested in the hope that we can apply many of the already existing patches quickly and allow IDLE to become a high quality cross-platform default starting point for new Python users that aren't already accustomed to the command line and editing text files directly. PEP-434 doesn't suggest moving the IDLE code outside of the Python tree. Please let me know if you have additional questions, feel free to help us with IDLE development!
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 12:40 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall@gmail.com> wrote:
That will ultimately be up to the IDLE developers. However, I don't expect it to happen any time soon, as remaining in the CPython repo allows them to easily re-use the existing buildbot fleet as they try to build out a decent test suite, and also means they don't have to spend their time working out a completely new development workflow rather than working on IDLE as it exists now. Past experience also suggests that maintaining things in the CPython repo and cutting periodic external releases (if the IDLE developers ever choose to do that) works a *lot* better than trying to periodically reintegrate an externally maintained tool. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
Having a standalone version of IDLE might be really useful to alternative Python implementations.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 5:26 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net> wrote:
I don't think it's worth discussing - tkinter does not work on any other implementation than CPython and it seems it won't work. It's a bit pity, but I guess if I felt really bad about it, I should just make it work. PS. are there idle projects in SoC? Maybe we should put a more pypy-friendly one there too? Cheers, fijal
Yes, it would probably make more sense to split the editor and shell processes as many Python IDEs do, with IDLE running in CPython and the user's computation running in the chosen interpreter. On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 8:35 AM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Simon Cross <hodgestar+pythondev@gmail.com
wrote:
Having a standalone version of IDLE might be really useful to alternative Python implementations.
I suspect it's too hard. I remember seeing some work on "anygui.py" that looked like an attempt to make these sorts of things work across various windowing platforms, but I don't think it made it very far. -Frank
participants (7)
-
Antoine Pitrou -
Daniel Holth -
fwierzbicki＠gmail.com -
Maciej Fijalkowski -
Nick Coghlan -
Simon Cross -
Todd Rovito