[Python-Dev] PEP 309

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Paul Moore wrote:
> While I'm not saying that it's too late to attempt to persuade Guido
> to reverse himself, it does seem to me to be a lot of fuss over a
> fairly small function - and no-one said anything like this at the
> time.

I would probably fuss much less if it would not simultaneously introduce
a new module as well.

> When I put up 5 reviews to get Martin to look at this, I honestly
> believed that it was a simple case of an accepted PEP with a complete
> implementation (admittedly scattered over a couple of SF patches), and
> would simply be a matter of committing it.

That was a fair assumption. However, it turned out that
a) people still have doubts about the proposed functionality of the PEP.
    For some, it does too much, for others, too little. Changing the PEP
    now would be much cheaper than first committing the changes, and then
    redoing the PEP again, as we might need to deprecate the
    functional.partial first. So as part of the review, I need to confirm
    that there still is no opposition to the PEP (which now appears to
    be the case)
b) it is not obvious that the patch is complete. It probably is, but
    I would have committed a single patch much quicker than collecting
    bits and pieces from multiple patches, only to find out that they
    won't integrate properly.
c) it appears that the implementation of the PEP is incorrect (as
    Raymond just discovered). Again, it is better to require a perfect
    implementation before committing the changes, instead of pushing
    the contributor afterwards to add the missing changes.

> IMHO, the burden is on those who want the "Accepted" status revoking
> to persuade Guido to pronounce to that effect.

Most certainly. So far, nobody stepped forward and requested that this
status is revoked, so no persuading is necessary. However, as part of
the review process, it *is* necessary to check again whether somebody
would have preferred that the PEP is revoked - atleast when the
acceptance of the PEP is many months old.

> Otherwise, based on the
> standard PEP workflow process, it's time to move on, and ensure that
> the patches provide a complete implementation, and assuming they do to
> commit them.

Correct. I would have done so more readily if I knew how the "Accepted"
status got into the document. I could have researched that (going
through old email archives), or I could just ask whether people agree
that the status is indeed "Accepted".

> (But I don't want to put myself up as a big "champion" of PEP 309 - I
> like it, and I'd like to get the "accepted and there's a patch, but
> not yet implemented" status resolved, but that's all. I'm not going to
> switch to Perl if the patch isn't accepted :-))

It seems to me that the patch will be committed shortly, assuming
somebody corrects the remaining flaws in the implementation. I could
do that, but I would prefer if somebody contributed an updated patch.

Regards,
Martin