[Python-Dev] Issues with Py3.1's new ipaddr

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Raymond Hettinger wrote:
> Also at issue is whether the
> addition was too rushed (see David Moss's comment on the tracker and
> later comments by Antoine Pitrou).

That comment was from January 2009; it had two aspects
a) is ipaddr getting special treatment just because it was contributed
   by Google? and
b) shouldn't alternatives be considered?

For a), the answer was always a clear "no". That the code comes from
Google didn't affect inclusion at all.

For b), there have been several attempts to approach alternatives since.
For example, both netaddr people and ipaddr people tried to merge the
projects, unsuccessfully. Both Duncan McGreggor and David Moss
eventually spoke in favor of including ipaddr.

So I think this particular issue was resolved.

As for Clay McLure's issue: I feel it's primarily a matter of taste.
I see nothing morally wrong in using the same class for hosts and
networks, i.e. representing a host as a network of size 1. I can
understand why people dislike that, but I don't see why it would stop
people from doing with the library what they want to do.

A number of other features might be missing from the library, for
example, as Clay complains, there is no support for ranges of addresses
(or, more generally, arbitrary sets). While I understand that there
are good applications for such a data structure, I also think it can
be added when contributed (and I would think "range of addresses"
is still too narrow, for some applications I would envision - such
as computing consistency of BGP tables and whois databases).

Regards,
Martin