[Distutils] [Distribute] Python 3 porting effort - plans proposal for 0.7/0.8

[Lennart Regebro]

2009/7/23 Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com>:
> That's exactly how Python 2.X / 3.x are developed.

Python 2.x and 3.x are two different, incompatible versions of one
software. Of course you have different branches.  We are to create one
compatible version for both Python 2 and Python 3. There is no reason
to have two different branches for what is for all intents and
purposes the same version and software.

> Like I said the python 3 branch will be pure python 3 code so we won't
> have to worry about keeping it compatible with both python 2.x and python 3

Well, you still need to do that, except that you need to write the
code twice, and keep it compatible.

> That makes the code simpler and cleaner.

But it more than doubles the effort, as you need to re-implement
everything, and also keep everything compatible.

> And since Python 3 is a setuptools-free land, we won't have to worry
> in the 0.8 version about a possible setuptools cohabitation.

No, but we need to do that in 0.7 anyway, so that doesn't actually
remove the work.

> And people that are using setuptools under 2.x will have less pain to
> switch to different
> package names and drop their "import setuptools" infavor of something else,
> for their 3.x versions.

I don't think we should switch the name for the 3.x version. People
need to be able to write code that works under both 2.x and 3.x, and
we want to make that as painless as possible. And having different
names for the same module under 2.x and 3.x doesn't help with that.
What the name is doesn't matter, but it needs to be the same under 2.x
and 3.x.

> I don't see any benefit in having a mixed code for 2.x/3.x, but troubles ahead;

There are no troubles ahead. You don't have to worry.

> The maintenance effort between
> the two branches is not hard as long as there's a maintainer that makes sure
> every commit in the 0.8 branch is backported, like in Python-dev.
> I am willing to do this maintenance work.

This has no significant benefits, creates more work and more
confusion. There is simply no reason to do this.

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
+33 661 58 14 64



-- 
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
+33 661 58 14 64