[Python-Dev] PEP 3148 ready for pronouncement

[Brian Quinlan]

On May 23, 2010, at 7:54 PM, Lennart Regebro wrote:

> On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 11:39, Brian Quinlan <brian at sweetapp.com>  
> wrote:
>> This package eliminates the need to construct the boilerplate  
>> present in
>> many Python applications i.e. a thread or process pool, a work  
>> queue and
>> result queue.  It also makes it easy to take an existing Python  
>> application
>> that executes (e.g. IO operations) in sequence and execute them in  
>> parallel.
>> It package provides common idioms for two existing modules i.e.
>> multiprocessing offers map functionality while threading doesn't.  
>> Those
>> idioms are well understood and already present in Java and C++.
>
> It can do that as a separate package as well.

You could make the same argument about any module in the stdlib.

> And not only that, it
> could then be available on PyPI for earlier versions of Python as
> well, making it much more likely to gain widespread acceptance.

I doubt it. Simple modules are unlikely to develop a following because  
it is too easy to partially replicate their functionality. urlparse  
and os.path are very useful modules but I doubt that they would have  
been successful on PyPI.

>> Could you be a little more specific about Guido's argument at PyCon?
>
> A module in stdlib has to be "dead". After it's included in the stdlib
> it can not go through any major changes since that would mean loss of
> backwards incompatibility.

The good news in this case is that the same API has been used  
successfully in Java and C++ for years so it is unlikely that any  
major changes will need to be made.

> Also, you can't fix bugs except by
> releasing new versions of Python. Therefore the API must be completely
> stable, and the product virtually bugfree before it should be in
> stdlib. The best way of ensuring that is to release it as a separate
> module on PyPI, and let it stabilize for a couple of years.


Yeah but that model isn't likely to work with this package.

Cheers,
Brian
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20100523/34e75e9d/attachment.html>