[Python-Dev] Status of json (simplejson) in cpython

[Bob Ippolito]

On Saturday, April 16, 2011, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> Le samedi 16 avril 2011 à 17:07 +0200, Xavier Morel a écrit :
>> On 2011-04-16, at 16:52 , Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>> > Le samedi 16 avril 2011 à 16:42 +0200, Dirkjan Ochtman a écrit :
>> >> On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 16:19, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> >>> What you're proposing doesn't address the question of who is going to
>> >>> do the ongoing maintenance. Bob apparently isn't interested in
>> >>> maintaining stdlib code, and python-dev members aren't interested in
>> >>> maintaining simplejson (assuming it would be at all possible). Since
>> >>> both groups of people want to work on separate codebases, I don't see
>> >>> how sharing a single codebase would be possible.
>> >>
>> >> From reading this thread, it seems to me like the proposal is that Bob
>> >> maintains a simplejson for both 2.x and 3.x and that the current
>> >> stdlib json is replaced by a (trivially changed) version of
>> >> simplejson.
>> >
>> > The thing is, we want to bring our own changes to the json module and
>> > its tests (and have already done so, although some have been backported
>> > to simplejson).
>>
>> Depending on what those changes are, would it not be possible to apply
>> the vast majority of them to simplejson itself?
>
> Sure, but the thing is, I don't *think* we are interested in backporting
> stuff to simplejson much more than Bob is interested in porting stuff to
> the json module.

I've backported every useful patch (for 2.x) I noticed from json to
simplejson. Would be happy to apply any that I missed if anyone can
point these out.

> I've contributed a couple of patches myself after they were integrated
> to CPython (they are part of the performance improvements Bob is talking
> about), but that was exceptional. Backporting a patch to another project
> with a different directory structure, a slightly different code, etc. is
> tedious and not very rewarding for us Python core developers, while we
> could do other work on our limited free time.

That's exactly why I am not interested in stdlib maintenance myself, I
only use 2.x and that's frozen... so I can't maintain the version we
would actually use.

> Also, some types of work would be tedious to backport, for example if we
> refactor the tests to test both the C and Python implementations.

simplejson's test suite has tested both for quite some time.

>> Furthermore, now that python uses Mercurial, it should be possible (or
>> even easy) to use a versioned queue (via MQ) for the trivial
>> adaptation, and the temporary alterations (things which will likely be
>> merged back into simplejson but are not yet, stuff like that) should
>> it not?
>
> Perhaps, perhaps not. That would require someone motivated to put it in
> place, ensure that it doesn't get in the way, document it, etc.
> Honestly, I don't think maintaining a single stdlib module should
> require such an amount of logistics.

It certainly shouldn't, especially because neither of them changes very fast.

-bob