[Python-Dev] Module version variable

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Wed Mar 16 20:13:59 CET 2011


On 16/03/2011 14:33, R. David Murray wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:33:20 -0400, Michael Foord<fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk>  wrote:
>> On 16/03/2011 12:39, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
>>> I was editing the turtle module (for issue11571, if you are
>>> interested) when I noticed that it has the following line:
>>>
>>> _ver = "turtle 1.1b- - for Python 3.1   -  4. 5. 2009"
>>>
>> unittest also has an outdated (and unmaintained) version number that I
>> would like to remove. Standard library modules should be versioned by
>> the release of Python they are packaged with (unless they are externally
>> maintained I guess) and so should preferably *not* carry version info.
> The email package has an internal version (which changes no more often
> than CPython's, but may change slower).  Existing code in the field
> tests this version attribute, so I don't think it should be deleted.
>
> The same may or may not be true of unittest, but if it hasn't been
> maintained its present utility is questionable so it may be just as
> well to delete it.

If you're actively maintaining the version info and are using it for api 
versioning then great. For unittest it is truly useless and much better 
not to have it.

Deprecating a module attribute is basically impossible (twisted has some 
code that makes it possible by subclassing the ModuleType I believe) so 
I will probably just delete it.

All the best,

Michael

> --
> R. David Murray                                      www.bitdance.com


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