[Python-Dev] time critical: issue 7902 and 2.6.6rc2

[Guido van Rossum]

Sounds to me like the fix is legit, and the bug it uncovered was a
real bug and should have been caught. There really is no justification
to consider it a feature -- the PEP is clear on that. So I think we
should keep the fix.

If it is a gray area, it is only gray because the implementation was
imperfect, not because one could argue about whether it should be a
feature. Anyone who wrote "from .os import walk" thinking it should
work did not understand relative imports at all. But more likely such
code only happened through some (semi-)automated editing and nobody
thought much about it at all, and they would have preferred for it to
fail in the first place. All in all it seems pretty clear.

--Guido

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> For 2.6.6rc1 a patch was committed that addressed bug 7902:
>
> http://bugs.python.org/issue7902
>
> http://svn.python.org/view?rev=81381&view=rev
>
> While this fixes a legitimate bug in Python 2.6, it also changes existing
> behavior in the 2.6 series.  As 2.6.6 is the last planned maintenance release,
> I do not think we've had enough testing of this change and am not sure it
> should stay in.
>
> Note that we've already seen one fallout from this.  Issue 9600 was fixed post
> rc1.  While its use of the syntax was incorrect, and the fix was easy and
> legitimate, I wonder how many other cases in unknown third party code there
> might be.  Antoine in IRC suggests it will be rare, and that the
> multiprocessing case was probably due to an incomplete code reorganization.  I
> agree, but still.
>
> http://bugs.python.org/issue9600
>
> Either way, I think we need a 2.6.6rc2 (a thought that's been invading my
> dreams all weekend :).  This would push back 2.6.6 final to September 12 or
> 13.
>
> I'd like your opinion on whether the fix for 7902 should stay in 2.6.6 or
> not.  Please respond asap, since *if* we revert this, I want that to go into
> 2.6.6rc2, and I'd like to tag that release in about 6 hours or so.
>
> Thanks,
> -Barry
>
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)