[Python-Dev] Re: Stability and change

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>Given all the recent flamage over this issue, probably I should have
>>a separate "Porting to 2.3" section that summarizes everything to
>>watch out for.
> 
> 
> That section might start by noting that anything that prints Boolean
> results (e.g. ``print a==b'') or converts them to strings might be
> affected by the new bool values that are now often returned as Boolean
> results.
> 
> Skimming Misc/NEWS might be the most efficient way to find out other
> things that could affect old code; e.g. I read that xrange's
> deprecated features are now removed, assert no longer tests for
> __debug__, an obscure change to __new__ and __init__, a change to
> pickling objects with __slots__, and a restriction of sys.exit() to a
> single argument (sure to bite someone).  Library: pwd, grp and
> resource return enhanced tuples; a change in ftplib.retrlines.  At the
> C API level (do you cover that?) the pymalloc changes probably warrant
> mention.

Please do (maybe as separate section only for the C API changes).

> And more, probably.
> 
> One question is how spin this.  Listing a long series of
> incompatibilities presents the image of a language that has many
> gratuitous incompatible changes -- which is not true and the opposite
> of the message we want to convey.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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