[Python-Dev] Re: [XML-SIG] Developer's Day

[Greg Stein]

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Andrew M. Kuchling wrote:
> Paul Prescod writes:
> >I don't understand this issue. Why would a C extension build on sgmlop
> >which is designed to make XML information available to *Python*
> >programmers?
> 
> No, no; I'm arguing against shipping with Expat; sgmlop good!
> Consider this scenario:
> 
> 	* Python includes Expat 1.0
> 	* Some C library (for DAV or whatever) uses Expat 1.1
> 	* Someone writes a Python interface to this C library and
> 	  attempts to compile it statically.
> 	* Two versions of Expat in the same binary; symbol conflicts
> 	  and core dumps, oh my!

We should ship pyexpat, not Expat.  (IMO)

> >So are you saying that Python 2 might have only five packages and
> >everything else must be downloaded? No httplib, no pickle, no random or
> >math, no calendar, pwd, grp, imaplib, nntplib, mailbox or rexec?
> 
> I'm not arguing for dropping existing packages; I'm against adding
> many more of them.  Existing library modules can stay where they are.
> But I wouldn't mind a minimalist Python too much, if it came with a
> script fetch-basic-packages:
> 
> python fetch-packages.py httplib
> python fetch-packages.py imaplib
>  ...  200 more lines ...

Considering that it would probably use HTTP to fetch the packages, I think
you wouldn't be fetching httplib :-)

But yes: I agree with the basic sentiment.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/