[Python-Dev] [Idle-dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library

[Tal Einat]

Guilherme Polo wrote:
> 2010/7/11 "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>:
>>> In the 2009 Google Summer of Code I was the mentor for a Brazilian
>>> student, Guilherme Polo, who completed and extended important
>>> improvements to IDLE made during the previous year by David Scherer.
>>> Given the somewhat official nature of this work, I assumed that these
>>> needed improvements would make it into the standard distribution, but as
>>> far as I know that hasn't happened. It would seem that if even this
>>> "sponsored" project didn't impact the standard Python distribution,
>>> something is broken in the procedures, and probably what is needed is,
>>> as Guido says, that someone be given the authority to get improvements
>>> to IDLE into the standard distribution. Making a significant change to
>>> the update procedures is clearly needed.
>>
>> I don't think so; instead, the perception of authority needs to be
>> adjusted (in the specific case). Guilherme could have committed these
>> changes, but, for whatever reason, decided not to. Nor did his direct
>> mentor (i.e. you) tell him to commit the changes, and neither did I.
>>
>>> Even if this needed change is made, there is also merit to Tai's
>>> suggestion of creating a separate project, to encourage developers like
>>> him to work together to improve IDLE, without having as a first priority
>>> to worry about getting it into the standard distribution, but with the
>>> clear understanding that this is the place to go for improvements to
>>> migrate into the standard distribution.
>>
>> Again, Guilherme could commit his changes any time.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Martin
>
> I think Martin has always supported me in some way and I really
> appreciate that. But, maybe because I won commit privileges solely
> based on GSoC work, I felt other developers wouldn't approve my
> commits without previous discussion and that is the major reason for
> not committing most of my patches.

FWIW this is why I started IDLE-Spoon (well, continued Noam Raphael's
project of the same name, in a sense). The idea was to have a fork of
IDLE with new features which need to be tried out by "beta testers" to
iron out all of the glitches before making it into the main version,
like IDLE-fork back in the beginning of the decade. However I have
utterly failed in promoting this project and getting "beta testers" on
board, at least partially due to the lack of interest from the
community (and admittedly my lack of PR skills).

- Tal Einat