[Python-Dev] public visibility of python-dev decisions "before it's too late"

[Nick Coghlan]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 9:11 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Am 16.03.11 08:06, schrieb Nick Coghlan:
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 3:20 AM, Stefan Behnel<stefan_ml at behnel.de>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> I still consider this is mostly a communication issue. If this change had
>>> been properly written up, preferably in a PEP, including the reasoning
>>> for
>>> it to get done, I think this whole discussion would not have been
>>> necessary.
>>
>> Yes, I think we need to keep "topic of wider interest" in mind when
>> deciding whether or not to write up a PEP, even if the change isn't
>> particularly controversial amongst the core developers. We made a
>> similar mistake with the zipfile and directory execution changes.
>
> PEP 5 actually requires that backwards-incompatible changes must be defined
> in a PEP. This wasn't done in this case; I agree it should have.
>
> I guess it's not too late to write this PEP, even though that's after the
> fact.

The rationale and initial implementation of the new API are here:
http://bugs.python.org/issue5630

Interestingly, there is no definite time frame on the deprecation
warnings in that discussion. It was just the standard "deprecation in
X.Y means removal in X.Y+1" that lead to 3.2 no longer providing the
PyCObject API.

An after the fact PEP would probably be valuable, as it could document
the rationale for the removal, as well as pointing to resources to
help folks in Lennart's situation that need to support both
PyCObject-only and PyCapsule-only versions of Python from the same C
code base. Perhaps Larry would be willing to write it up if we asked?

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia