[Python-Dev] Notice of intent: rich comparisons

[Guido van Rossum]

> Now that 1.5.2 is finalized, I'll be starting to prepare a patch for the
> rich comparisons.  

Cool!

> Guido, how do you envision python-dev working?

I though we'd just crack Monty Python jokes while pretending to work :-)

> Do you want to hand out a TODO list for 1.6?

Well, I'm not saying that this is the definitive list, but certainly
there are a bunch of things that definitely need to be incorporated.
Here's an excerpt of a list that I keep for myself, in no particular
order, with brief annotations (I have a meeting in 15 minutes :):

Redesign thread/init APIs

	See the recent discussion in the thread-sig.  There should be
	some kind of micro-init that initializes essential components
	(including the thread lock!) but doesn't create an interpreter
	or a threadstate object.  There should also be a notion of a
	default interpreter.

Break up into VM, parser, import, mainloop, and other components?

	The porting efforts to seriously small machines (Win/CE,
	Pilot, etc.) all seem to need a Python VM that doesn't
	automatically pull in the parser and interactive main loop.
	There are other reasons as well to isolate various parts
	of the functionality (including all numeric data types except
	ints).

	This could include: restructuring of the parser so codeop.py
	can be simplified; making the interactive main loop a script.

String methods

	Barry has his patches ready.

Unicode

	What is the status of /F's latest attempts?

Rich comparisons

	This is Dave's plan.

Coercions

	Marc-Andre Lemburg has some good suggestions here:
	http://starship.python.net/~lemburg/coercion-0.6.zip

Import revamp

	It should be much easier to add hooks to allow importing
	from zip files, from a URL, etc., or (different) hooks to
	allow looking for different extensions (e.g. to automatically
	generate ILU stubs).  This should help the small platforms
	too, since they often don't have a filesystem, so their
	imports will have to come from some other place.

ANSI C

	I'm tired of supporting K&R C.  All code should be converted
	to using prototypes.  The Py_PROTO macros should go.  We can
	add const-correctness to all code.  Too bad for platforms
	without decent compilers (let them get GCC).

Buffer object API extensions

	Marc-Andre Lemburg has a patch

Distutil

	Should we start integrating some of the results of the
	distutil SIG?  (What's the status?  I haven't been paying
	attention.)

Misc

	Jeremy Hylton's urllib2.py

	Greg Stein's new httplib.py (or Jeremy's?)

	Andrew Kuchling's new PCRE release?

	The IPv6 patches?

Gotta run!

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