[Python-Dev] Forgotten Py3.0 change to remove Queue.empty() and Queue.full()

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>> I disagree that our users are served by constantly breaking the
>> API, and removing stuff just because we can. I can't see how
>> removing API can possibly serve a user.
> 
> Am not following you here.  My suggestion was to remove the two
> methods in Py3.1 which isn't even in alpha yet.

Your proposal was also to add a warning for 3.0.2. This is what I
primarily object to.

> This is for a feature
> that has a simple substitute, was undocumented for Py3.0, and had
> long been documented in Py2.x as being unreliable.

The latter is not true. It was not documented as unreliable. Instead,
it was correctly documented as not being able, in general, to predict
the result of a subsequent put operation. In that sense, it is as
unreliable as the qsize() method, which remains supported and
documented.

Interestingly enough, the usage of .empty() in test_multiprocessing
is entirely safe, AFAICT. So whether the API is reliable or unreliable
very much depends on the application (as is true for many
multi-threading issues).

> It's seems silly to me that an incomplete patch from a year ago
> would need to wait another two years to ever see the light of day

Right. So it might be better to revert the patch, and restore the
documentation. I still fail to see the rationale for removing these
two methods.

Regards,
Martin