[Python-Dev] PEP 384 accepted

[Éric Araujo]

Le 02/12/2010 23:17, Martin v. Löwis a écrit :
> Before the freeze, distutils was unmaintained (i.e. before you started
> maintaining it), but people who want to improve it gradually atleast
> could. Now gradual improvements are also banned, so it's not only
> unmaintained, but I can't even provide support for the PEP in Python
> that was just accepted.

I wonder what your definition of “unmaintained” is.  Tarek has been
fixing bugs for two years, and recently I have been made a committer to
assist him.  It’s true that I’ve not been as active as I would have
liked*, but I did fix some bugs, as I think you know, given that you’ve
helped me in some reports.

Sure, distutils is not as well-maintained as other modules, but a dozen
bugs have been fixed by five or six of us since the revert.  I do feel
responsible for all 116 remaining bugs, and intend to address all of them.

 * This is partly normal, since I had warned before I was accepted as a
   committer that my time would be scarce for a year, partly due to
   the fact that I also do bug triage, doc work and patch reviews, and
   partly due to some personal problems with focusing.


On the matter of freeze exceptions, there have been two:
- reading the makefile with surogateescape error handler so that python
can build with an ASCII locale in a non-ASCII path (haypo, #6011)
- handle soabiflags (barry, #9807).
I took part in the discussion before those changes and did not object to
them: they are very small changes that enable a new feature of Python
3.2.  Maybe I should have requested Tarek’s approval for those changes;
he knows better than me how third parties may break because of changes
that don’t seem to break anything.


Regards