[Python-Dev] Dropping decorator syntax for 2.4?

[Guido van Rossum]

> This may seem silly, but would it be possible to support both
> grammars during the alpha cycle so people get a chance to try it out
> (especially those people most likely to use the feature) and weed
> one out for the beta?  I take it the grammar changes would be only a
> small source of bugs, and in any case, dumping one after the alpha
> should reduce the bug count.

Hm, I can only see downsides to this.  Producing the unified patch
would be painful, as the code has to deal with both sources of
decorators (and what if both are present???).  Users would be confused
about which syntax to use.  Users would be discouraged even more than
with one alternative to use the feature except for pure experiments,
because they won't know until the beta cycle which syntax will
survive.  Ripping out one version would be problematic (due to the
merging of patches).

As I said before, I'll try to discuss this extensively with users at
EuroPython.

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