[Python-Dev] Python profiler and other tools

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Part of me agrees with you regarding the generally different tool
> lifecycle, but another part says we need these tools in the standard
> library or we risk inadvertently breaking the hooks they would still
> rely on, even as third party projects.
> 
> I suspect a major factor here relates to the degree of unit test
> coverage for these components - for areas that aren't of direct
> interest to me, I'll still deal with it if something I do breaks that
> code's unit tests, but if the tests don't start failing I'll never
> even think to check for an incompatibility. (e.g. I seem to recall
> line tracing for with statements and/or generator expressions being
> broken for a while before we fixed it)

It is at best entertaining to ponder about reasons here; I doubt
anything productive can come out of such a discussion.

It may be fun posting a message to a ten-year-old issue saying
"ACT NOW (you sluggards)", but I question that this will, on average,
improve things. Likewise, speculating that tool support is deliberately
ignored probably won't improve things (specifically *not* responding
to Nick here).

On the other hand, posting actual patches that fix actual bugs can
make a lot of a difference. Also, having a maintainer who is willing
to look into these patches and accept the good ones will make a lot
of a difference.

Regards,
Martin