[Python-Dev] PEP about sys.implementation and implementation specific user site directory

[Benjamin Peterson]

2009/10/9 Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de>:
> Fellow Python developers!
>
> In the light of our recent discussion about implementation specific
> information and user site directory I like to start a new PEP. Much to
> my regret I wasn't able to contribute to Python core development over
> the past months. I hope I can find some free time over the next weeks.

Glad to have you back!

>
> Before I start with the PEP I like to reach consensus over the goal.
> Alternative implementations of our beloved programming languages are
> becoming more important every day. Although IronPython, Jython and PyPy
> are trying hard to get as compatible to CPython as possible there are
> numerous reasons for conditional code. General Python unit tests vs.
> CPython specific unit tests are one reasons, implementation specific
> module search paths are another. At the moment Python has no easy way to
> inspect the implementation besides some code in the platform module.
>
> I'm proposing two new attributes in the sys module: sys.implementation
> and sys.userdirsuffix.

Overall, +1.

>
> sys.implementation
> ------------------
>
> (Proposed by Nick, MAL and others.)
>
> sys.implementation is a PyStructSequence that contains various
> information about the current implementation. Some fields are required
> to be present on every implementation. Implementations may choose to add
> additional fields as they see fit. Some fields like compiler are useful
> for introspection and are already part of sys.version. I like to include
> them for the sake of completeness.

Can we generate sys.version from sys.implementation then?

>
> id (required):
>  lower case identifier, for example "cpython", "ironpython", "jython",
> "pypy"
>
> name (required):
>  mixed case name of the implementation, for example "CPython",
> "IronPython", "Jython", "PyPy"
>
> platform (required):
>  platform or language of the implementation, for example "C", ".NET",
> "Java"
>
> runtime (required):
>  lower case runtime library of the implementation, for example "libc",
> "msvcrt90", "java6", ".net"
>
> compiler (required):
>  verbose name of the compiler, for example "GCC 4.3.3", "Java
> HotSpot(TM) Client VM (Apple Inc.)", "Mono JIT compiler version 2.0.1"
>
> ...
>
>
> sys.userdirsuffix
> -----------------

Why not site.userdirsuffix?


-- 
Regards,
Benjamin