[Python-Dev] pytho-dev Summary for 2003-04-01 through 2003-04-15
Brett Cannon
drifty@alum.berkeley.edu
Fri, 18 Apr 2003 14:39:15 -0700 (PDT)
Sorry this is later than normal but I got sucked into helping with
elections at UC Berkeley by providing IT support (first time elections are
all on computer).
Anyway, you guys have until Monday night to reply with corrections for the
summary.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
python-dev Summary for 2003-04-01 through 2003-04-15
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is a summary of traffic on the `python-dev mailing list`_ from April
1, 2003 through April 15, 2003. It is intended to inform the wider Python
community of on-going developments on the list and to have an archived
summary of each thread started on the list. To comment on anything
mentioned here, just post to python-list@python.org or `comp.lang.python`_
with a subject line mentioning what you are discussing. All python-dev
members are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the community, so
don't hesitate to take a stance on something. And if all of this really
interests you then get involved and join `python-dev`_!
This is the fifteenth summary written by Brett Cannon (<voice of Comic
Book Guy from "The Simpsons">Most summaries written by a single person
*ever* </voice>).
All summaries are archived at http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ .
Please note that this summary is written using reStructuredText_ which can
be found at http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html . Any unfamiliar punctuation
is probably markup for reST_ (otherwise it is probably regular expression
syntax or a typo =); you can safely ignore it, although I suggest learning
reST; its simple and is accepted for `PEP markup`__. Also, because of the
wonders of programs that like to reformat text, I cannot guarantee you
will be able to run the text version of this summary through Docutils_
as-is unless it is from the original text file.
__ http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0012.html
.. _python-dev: http://www.python.org/dev/
.. _python-dev mailing list:
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
.. _comp.lang.python: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.python
.. _Docutils: http://docutils.sf.net/
.. _reST:
.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html
.. contents::
.. _last summary:
http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2003-03-16_2003-03-31.html
======================
Summary Announcements
======================
So all three people who expressed an opinion about the new Quickies_
format liked the new one, so it stays.
Do you guys actually like the links to the CVS in the Summaries? The
various links I put in to every single file mentioned that does not have
direct documentation is time-consuming. But if you find it useful it can
stay. Please let me know whether you actually use it (this means if you
don't tell me!).
=========
`Boom`__
=========
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034370.html
Splinter threads:
- `RE: [Python-checkins] python/dist/src/Modules gcmodule.c
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034371.html>`__
Related threads:
- `Garbage collecting closures
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034521.html>`__
- `Algorithm for finalizing cycles
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034609.html>`__
Do you want to know what dedication is? Thinking of Python code that will
cause Python to crash during dental surgery. Well, Tim Peters is that
dedicated and managed to come up with some code that crashed Python when
it attempted to garbage-collect some objects. This begins the joy that is
garbage collection and finalizer functions.
Gather around, children, as we learn about how Python tries to keep you
from having to worry about keeping track of your trash. When Python
executes the garbage collector, it looks to see what objects are
unreachable based on reference counts; when something has a reference
count of 0 nothing is referencing it so it is just floating out in the
middle of no where with no one giving a hoot about whether it is their or
not (children: "Awww! Poor, lonely object!"). But some of these lonely
objects have what we call a finalizer (children: "What's that?!?"; isn't
it cute when children are still inquisitive? Good for you for still being
inquisitive! Have to be supportive, you know). A finalizer is either an
instance that has a __del__ object or an object that has something in its
tp_del slot (children: <nod>). Does anyone know why we have to take of
these lonely objects that are somewhat special? (children: <look around
for someone to be brave enough to actually try to answer; no one does>)
Well, since these objects have something that must be called before they
are garbage-collected, we have to make sure they don't reference an object
that is out there but people think is cared about when it is only an
object with a finalizer and we don't care about their opinions; it might
want to keep an object's reference count above 0 and thus not be collected
(children: "Oh..."). What makes them especially difficult to handle is
that some objects that don't seem like finalizers lie end up acting like
they do by defining a __getattr__ method that does very rude things
(children: "That's not nice!"). And since it is really hard to tell
whether they are real finalizers or just act like one, we just let them be
out there forever so that they don't make the great Interpreter have to
deal with them (some rabble-rouser: "My dad says that there is no great
Interpreter and that everything came from the Compiler and Linker when
they got together and did something my dad won't tell me about. Something
about the bits and the bees..."; rest of children: "Nu-uh! The Interpeter
is real! We've seen it! It's all-powerful and knowing! Take it back,
take it back!"). Luckily, though, it is only an issue with something
old-timers call classic classes; things that started to decay away long,
long ago(children: "Yay! No more cruft!") And thanks to the diligent
work of some very important people, it has been dealt with (children:
"Yay! Thank you important people!"). There is a lesson to be learned
here children; do not put old things to pasture to early since you can
make stubborn old people mad which is bad since they make up the majority
of voters in America (children: "Yes, teacher!"; smart-ass in the back of
the room: "How old are you, teacher?" <snicker>).
Guido said that Python's cleanup model could be summed up as "things get
destroyed when> nothing refers to them at some arbitrary time after
nothing refers to
them." And the corollary is "always explicitly close your external
resources."
Tim Peters gave several suggestions in regards in how to make sure things
get cleaned up; from registering cleanup code with sys.atexit() to keep a
weakref in a module with a finalizer to be executed when the module is
collected.
=========
Quickies
=========
`Distutils documentation amputated in 2.2 docs?`__
Splinter threads:
- `How do I report a bug?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034328.html>`__
Greg Ewing that two sections from the Distutils docs disappeared
between Python 1.6 and 2.2. Sections are still missing and will stay so
until someone comes up with a patch to add in the missing sections. There
was also a discussion on making it more obvious how to report a bug on
SF_.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034314.html
.. _SF:
.. _SourceForge: http://www.sf.net/
`PEP 269 once more.`__
Jonathan Riehl got his patch for implementing `PEP 269`_ ("Pgen Module
for Python") but then uploaded a newer version that is better.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034317.html
.. _PEP 269: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0269.html
`Minor issue with PyErr_NormalizeException`__
It was discovered that PyErr_NormalizeException could dump core
because it forgot to return on possible errors. It's been fixed and
back-ported.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034325.html
`Capabilities (we already got one)`__
Splinter threads:
- `Capabilities
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034315.html>`__
- `Security challenge
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034343.html>`__
The thread that refuses to die continued into this month. Nothing
ground-breaking was said, though. Ben Laurie, though, did say he is
working on a PEP_ so hopefully that will make this whole discussion clear.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034323.html
.. _PEP: http://www.python.org/peps/
`[PEP] += on return of function call result`__
Someone wanted to do ``log.setdefault(r, '') += "test %d\n" % t``
which does not work. But it was pointed out you can just do ``temp =
log.setdefault(r, ''); temp += "test %d\n" % t``.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034339.html
`How to suppress instance __dict__?`__
This is only of interest to people who use `Boost.Python`_ (which I
don't use so I am not going to summarize it; although if you use C++ you
will want to look at Boost.Python).
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034319.html
.. _Boost.Python: http://www.boost.org/libs/python/doc/
`Super and properties`__
Someone got bit by properties not working nicely with super(). Nathan
Srebro subsequently posted a `link
<http://www.ai.mit.edu/~nati/Python/>`__ to a his own version of super()
which handles this problem.
__
`fwd: Dan Sugalski on continuations and closures`__
Kevin Altis forwarded some posts by Dan Sugalski (the guy heading the
Parrot_ project and who Guido will throw a pie at at OSCON 2004 =) about
closures and continuations that he found at
http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/04/03/#closuresAndContinuations .
Very well-written and might clarify things for people if they care to know
more about closures, continuations, and why Lisp folks claim they are so
damn important.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034368.html
.. _Parrot: http://www.parrotcode.org/
`LONG_LONG`__
Python 2.3 renames the LONG_LONG definition from the C API to
PY_LONG_LONG as it should have been renamed. Yes, this will break things,
but it was incorrect to have not renamed it. If you need to keep
compatibility with code before Python 2.3, just use the following code
(contributed by Mark Hammond)::
#if defined(PY_LONG_LONG) && !defined(LONG_LONG)
#define LONG_LONG PY_LONG_LONG
#endif
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034396.html
`socket question`__
Someone asking why something didn't build under Solaris and
subsequently being redirected to python-list@python.org .
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034399.html
`PEP305 csv package: from csv import csv?`__
Why does one have to do ``from csv import csv``? Wouldn't it be more
reasonable to just do some magic in __init__.py for the csv_ package to do
this properly? Well, Skip Montanaro forwarded the question to cvs
development list at csv@mail.mojam.com and said he probably will make the
change in the near future.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034409.html
.. _csv: http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/lib/module-csv.html
`SF file uploads work now`__
Yes, hell must have frozen over since you can now upload a file when
you start a new patch or bug report on SourceForge_.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034416.html
`Unicode`__
Splinter threads:
- `OT: Signal/noise ratio
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034462.html>`__
Once again another question on python-dev that is not appropriate for
the list. But this one spawned questions of whether the mailing list
should be renamed (answer: no, since it is fairly well-known what
python-dev is for) or go back to having the list being closed and
requiring moderator approval for posts from people off the list (answer:
no, because the amount of work was just too much of a pain and the amount
of off-topic emails has not equated to the filtering work done
previously).
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034453.html
`Placement of os.fdopen functionality`__
It was suggested to make the fdopen method of the os_ module a class
method of 'file'. That was determined to be YAGNI and thus won't happen.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034380.html
.. _os: http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/lib/os-newstreams.html
`Adding item in front of a list`__
Tim Peters wonders how many people would be made upset if
list.insert() supported a negative index argument.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034518.html
`Why is spawn*p* not available on Windows?`__
Shane Halloway might add one of the os.spawn*p*() functions to
Windows.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034473.html
`tzset`__
time.tzset() is no long on Windows because it is broken (and I will
behave and not make a joke about how it would be just as broken as the OS
or anything because I am unbiased).
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034480.html
`backporting string changes to 2.2.3`__
Neal Norwitz updated docs and back-ported changes to the string_
module to bring it in sync with the actual string object.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034489.html
.. _string: http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/lib/module-string.html
`List wisdom`__
http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/PythonDevWisdom is a wiki page
created to contain the random nuggets of wisdom that come up on
python-dev.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034575.html
`ValueErrors in range()`__
Fixed the error where range() returned ValueError when it should
return TypeError.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034617.html
`_socket efficiencies ideas`__
Marcus Mendenhall wanted to get a patch applied that would allow you
to create a socket that could skip a DNS lookup. He also wanted to add
the ability to include a '<numeric>' prefix IP addresses to make sure that
DNS lookup was skipped. Various ways of trying to cut back on time wasted
on unneeded DNS lookups was discussed but no solution was found
acceptable.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034403.html
`tp_clear return value`__
tp_clear could stand to return void, but can't change because of
backwards-compatibility. Will most likely end up documenting to ignore
what is returned by what is put into tp_clear.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034433.html
`More socket questions`__
Someone suggested fixing something that has been solved in Python 2.3.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034472.html
`Embedded python on Win2K, import failures`__
Someone had errors embedding Windows. No real conclusion came out of
it.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034506.html
`More int/long integration issues`__
Splintered threads:
- `range() as iterator
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034530.html>`__
Before Python 3.0 (when xrange() will disappear), there is a good
chance that the idiom ``for x in range(): ...`` will be caught by the
compiler and compiled into a lazy generator (probably a generator).
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034516.html
`Changes to gettext.py for Python 2.3`__
Barry Warsaw suggested some changes to gettext_ but none of them
seemed to catch on.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034511.html
.. _gettext:
`Evil setattr hack`__
Someone discovered how to set attributes on built-in types. Guido
checked in code to prevent it.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034535.html
`Using temp files and the Internet in regression tests`__
I asked if it was okay to use in regression tests temporary files
(answer: yes it is and if you only need one use test.test_support.TESTFN)
or sockets (answer: yes as long as
test.test_support.is_resource_enabled("network") is True). It led to me
being unofficially assigned the task of coming up with documentation for
test_support and regrtest for both the library documentation and
Lib/test/README. I also got CVS commit privileges on Python itself! I
became an official Python developer! Woohoo!
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034538.html
`migration away from SourceForge?`__
It was suggested we revisit the idea of moving Python development off
of SourceForge_ because of the usual crappy CVS performance and
underwhelming tracker performance. There is also the issue that problems
with the setup cannot be fixed on our schedule. GForge_ and Roundup_ were
both suggested as alternatives. Roundup specifically has gotten a decent
amount of support since it is in Python and thus we could get things fixed
quickly. Trouble is that it is not polished enough yet and we would need
to furnish our own CVS (but Ben Laurie might be gracious enough to help us
out on that front with possible hosting at http://www.thebunker.net/ ).
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034540.html
.. _GForge: http://gforge.org/
.. _Roundup: http://roundup.sf.net/
`How should time.strptime() handle UTC?`__
I asked if anyone thought time.strptime() should recognize UTC and GMT
timezones by default for setting whether or not daylight savings was being
used. No one has given their opinion yet (do you have one?).
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034543.html
`Big trouble in CVS Python`__
CVS Python was crashing on the regression tests. It turned out to be
from the reuse of a variable in the code that implements range(). Tim
Peters said a "Word to the wise: don't ever try to reuse a variable whose
address is passed to PyArg_ParseTuple for anything other than holding what
PyArg_ParseTuple does or doesn't store into it".
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034544.html
`GIL vs thread state`__
Discovered the docs for PyThreadState_Clear() are incorrect (or at
least not very clear).
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034574.html
`test_pwd failing`__
test_pwd was failing and now it isn't.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034626.html
`lists v. tuples`__
You can tell whether a comparison function does a 3-way or 2-way
(using <); but that is not Pythonic and thus won't be done so as to allow
someone to pass either a 2 or 3-way comparison function to list.sort() and
have the method figure out what type of sort it is.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034646.html
`LynxOS 4 port`__
Duane Voth wants to get Python ported to the LynxOS on PPC.
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034647.html
`sre.c and sre_match()`__
The C code for the re module is not simple. =)
__ http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034653.html