[Import-sig] Re: Long-awaited imputil comments

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Wed, 16 Feb 2000 16:47:34 -0500


> Hmm, wasn't there a reference earlier today to "You ain't 
> gonna need it"?

I claim we need it.

> Java doesn't do it.

So?

> You can already do it if you install source, then archive it, 
> leaving the __file__ attribute alone - IDLE / Pythonwin will pop 
> up the source.
> 
> Nobody sane is going to put code under active development in 
> an archive.

But there are other reasons why you would want to see tracebacks even
if you're not actively developing.

Plenty of people distribute mostly-working code to end users and ask
them to report tracebacks.  E.g. the Ultraseek product from Infoseek
(used for the python.org search) occasionally displays tracebacks.
The Zope guys also do this (they hide the traceback in an HTML comment
I believe, but it's there).

Sure, you can take a traceback without source lines and match up the
line numbers manually with your source, assuming you have the exact
version of the source -- but it's a pain.

> A developer who wants run from an archive, yet see (but not 
> alter) the source at a traceback can do as above (install 
> source, then archive it).

That's no option for distributions -- the archive is the only
distribution!

> Users who don't know and don't care can snip the traceback 
> and send it to the developer, who can find the source.

As I said, very inconvenient.

> Yeah, it can be supported, but Pythonworks is the only people 
> who are going to use it, and the mad scientist can code it up 
> in 10 minutes ;-). 

I didn't say I wanted *you* to code it.  I just said that I want the
API.  Accessing the source code is a common need in lots of places.
Adding the source to the archive is a nice solution.

Why don't you like it?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)