[Python-3000] AtheOS?

[Talin]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>>     Martin> It took some effort to integrate this for 2.3, so I feel sad
>>     Martin> that this is now all ripped out again. I'm not certain the code
>>     Martin> gets cleaner that way - just smaller.
>>
>> Well, fewer #ifdefs can't be a bad thing.
> 
> By that principle, it would be best if Python supported only a single
> platform - I would chose Linux (that would also save me creating
> Windows binaries :-)
> 
> Fewer ifdefs are a bad thing if they also go along with fewer
> functionality, or worse portability. As I said, people contributed their
> time to write this code (in this case, it took me several hours of work,
> to understand and adjust the patch being contributed), and I do find
> it bad, in principle, that this work is now all declared wasted.

I wonder how hard it would be - and how much it would distort the Python 
code base - if most if not all platform-specific differences could be 
externalized from the core Python source code. Ideally, a platform 
wishing to support Python shouldn't have to be part of the core Python 
distribution, and a "port" of Python should consist of the concatenation 
of two packages, the universal Python sources, and a set of 
platform-specific adapters, which may or may not be hosted on the main 
Python site.

However, this just might be wishful thinking on my part...

-- Talin