On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 4:42 AM, Nick Coghlan
On 31 October 2017 at 02:29, Guido van Rossum
wrote: What's your proposed process to arrive at the list of recommended packages?
I'm thinking it makes the most sense to treat inclusion in the recommended packages list as a possible outcome of proposals for standard library inclusion, rather than being something we'd provide a way to propose specifically.
I don't think that gets you off the hook for a process proposal. We need some criteria to explain why a module should be on the recommended list -- not just a ruling as to why it shouldn't be in the stdlib.
We'd only use it in cases where a proposal would otherwise meet the criteria for stdlib inclusion, but the logistics of actually doing so don't work for some reason.
But that would exclude most of the modules you mention below, since one of the criteria is that their development speed be matched with Python's release cycle. I think there must be some form of "popularity" combined with "best of breed". In particular I'd like to have a rule that explains why flask and Django would never make the list. (I don't know what that rule is, or I would tell you -- my gut tells me it's something to do with having their own community *and* competing for the same spot.) Running the initial 5 proposals through that filter:
* six: a cross-version compatibility layer clearly needs to be outside the standard library
Hm... Does six still change regularly? If not I think it *would* be a candidate for actual stdlib inclusion. Just like we added u"..." literals to Python 3.4.
* setuptools: we want to update this in line with the PyPA interop specs, not the Python language version
But does that exclude stdlib inclusion? Why would those specs change, and why couldn't they wait for a new Python release?
* cffi: updates may be needed for PyPA interop specs, Python implementation updates or C language definition updates
Hm, again, I don't recall that this was debated -- I think it's a failure that it's not in the stdlib.
* requests: updates are more likely to be driven by changes in network protocols and client platform APIs than Python language changes
Here I agree. There's no alternative (except aiohttp, but that's asyncio-based) and it can't be in the stdlib because it's actively being developed.
* regex: we don't want two regex engines in the stdlib, transparently replacing _sre would be difficult, and _sre is still good enough for most purposes
I think this needn't be recommended at all. For 99.9% of regular expression uses, re is just fine. Let's just work on a strategy for introducing regex into the stdlib.
Of the 5, I'd suggest that regex is the only one that could potentially still make its way into the standard library some day - it would just require someone with both the time and inclination to create a CPython variant that used _regex instead of _sre as the default regex engine, and then gathered evidence to show that it was "compatible enough" with _sre to serve as the default engine for CPython.
For the first four, there are compelling arguments that their drivers for new feature additions are such that their release cycles shouldn't ever be tied to the rate at which we update the Python language definition.
As you can tell from my arguing, the reasons need to be written up in more detail.
And is it really just going to be a list of names, or is there going to be
some documentation (about the vetting, not about the contents of the packages) for each name?
I'm thinking a new subsection in https://docs.python.org/ devguide/stdlibchanges.html for "Recommended Third Party Packages" would make sense, covering what I wrote above.
That's too well hidden for my taste.
It also occurred to me that since the recommendations are independent of the Python version, they don't really belong in the version specific documentation.
But that doesn't mean they can't (also) be listed there. (And each probably has its version dependencies.)
While the Developer's Guide isn't really the right place for the list either (except as an easier way to answer "Why isn't <X> in the standard library?" questions), it could be a good interim option until I get around to actually writing a first draft of https://github.com/python/ redistributor-guide/ (which I was talking to Barry about at the dev sprint, but didn't end up actually creating any content for since I went down a signal handling rabbit hole instead).
Hm, let's not put more arbitrary check boxes in the way of progress. Maybe it can be an informational PEP that's occasionally updated? -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)