[Python-Dev] readd u'' literal support in 3.3?

[Vinay Sajip]

Jannis Leidel <jannis <at> leidel.info> writes:

> I don't want to rain on your parade,

Not at all - feel free. I don't feel rained on in the least :-)

> but even if your port of Django passes all tests, it's not at all near
> completion. As a framework we not only have to worry about the ability to run
> on Python 3.X but also how to teach our community to upgrade their projects
> (if possible at all). That means to reduce the number of hacks needed and
> thoroughly reviewing to not suddenly lead into a maintenance dead end.
> E.g. I'm still not sure the one codebase strategy is better than the 2to3
> strategy.

Of course, and I did say in the post you're replying to that I know that the
Django port has some way to go. But even if you decide that the single code
base port is not something you want for Django, nevertheless, I think I've
shown that the single port strategy can work for a large project like Django
from a purely technical perspective such as passing a very large test suite.

Of course, there are many non-technical issues such as documentation, ease of
ongoing maintenance etc. which no doubt you will be reviewing in due course.

(In the above, I'm using "technical" in a very narrow sense, obviously.)

> Also, stating that pip and virtualenv were easy to port like other projects
> seems to me like only half of the story -- Carl and me had to fix a
> non-trivial part of your port before being able to do the Py3k release.

Sure, and I didn't mean to imply that I did all the work - but I did announce
it only after I got almost all, if not all, tests passing on 2.x and 3.x from
a single code base - just as I did with Django. If the tests didn't cover
everything, then more work would certainly have been required, but it's still
a respectable milestone to have achieved, IMO. But it's the single code base
strategy that I wanted to highlight - and AFAIK you haven't had to back-pedal
on that (or at least, if you did, it might have been nice to drop me a line to
that effect).

> I don't mean to diminish your work, it *is* appreciated, but I'm rather
> careful with generalizations when it comes to changes of a platform on
> such epic scale.

I hope I'm not being careless where you're being careful, but where does
caution start and timidity begin? You might remember that you brought up the
desirability of the Python 3 port on django-developers in September, which
got me thinking about it. My view of it is, if everyone thinks of it like
eating an elephant, no one is even going to take the first bite, for fear of
indigestion. Don't get me wrong - I understand about priorities and
commitments, and everyone scratching their own itch. So, I scratched mine, and
bet on the hunch that the elephant was only a chocolate elephant, and not a
real one. Time will of course tell ;-)

Regards,

Vinay Sajip