[Python-Dev] IronPython specific code in inspect module

[Benjamin Peterson]

2009/5/19 Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk>:
> I have IronPython specific versions of several of these functions which use
> .NET reflection and inspect could fallback to if sys.platform == 'cli'.
> Would it be ok for me to add these to the inspect module? Obviously the
> tests would only run on IronPython... The behaviour for CPython would be
> unaffected.

I wish we had more of a policy about this. There seems to be a long
tradition of special casing other implementations in the stdlib. For
example, see types.py and tests/test_support.py for remnants of Jython
compatibility. However, I suspect this code has languished with out
core-developers using the trunk stdlib with Jython. I suppose this is
a good reason why we are going to split the stdlib out of the main
repo.

However that still leaves the question of how to handle putting code
like this in. Should we ask that all code be
implementation-independent as much as possible from the original
authors? Do all all changes against the stdlib have to be run against
several implementations? Should we sprinkle if switches all over the
codebase for different implementations, or should new support files be
added?


-- 
Regards,
Benjamin