[Python-Dev] 1.6 job list

[Greg Stein]

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> [Greg]
> > And why *can't* we start on repackaging old module? I think the only
> > reason that somebody came up with to NOT do it was "well, if we don't
> > repackage the whole thing, then we should repackage nothing."  Which, IMO,
> > is totally bogus. We'll never get anywhere operating under that principle.
> 
> The reason is backwards compatibility.  Assume we create a package
> "web" and move all web related modules into it: httplib, urllib,
> htmllib, etc.  Now for backwards compatibility, we add the web
> directory to sys.path, so one can write either "import web.urllib" or
> "import urllib".  But that loads the same code twice!  And in this
> (carefully chosen :-) example, urllib actually has some state which
> shouldn't be replicated.

We don't add it to the path. Instead, we create new modules that look
like:

---- httplib.py ----
from web.httplib import *
----

The only backwards-compat issue with this approach is that people who poke
values into the module will have problems. I don't believe that any of the
modules were designed for that, anyhow, so it would seem an acceptable to
(effectively) disallow that behavior.

> Plus, it's too much work -- I'd rather focus on getting 1.6 out of the
> door, and there's a lot of other stuff I need to do besides moving
> modules around.

Stuff that *you* need to do, sure. But there *are* a lot of us who can
help here, and some who desire to spend their time moving modules.

Cheers,
-g

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