[Python-Dev] folding cElementTree behind ElementTree in 3.3

[Nick Coghlan]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 7:37 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Notice that the last time something like this came up (bsddb), it
> actually resulted in a removal of the respective package from the
> standard library.

bsddb was a *very* different case - it was actively causing buildbot
stability problems and various reports on the tracker due to changes
in the external Berkeley DB API. Once we had sqlite3 in the standard
lib as an alternate DB-API backend, it was hard to justify the ongoing
maintenance hassles *despite* Jesus Cea stepping up as the maintainer
(and he still maintains the pybsddb version - that was actually a big
factor in *letting* us drop it, since we could just direct current
users towards the PyPI version).

Most orphan modules in the stdlib aren't like that - yes, their APIs
stagnate (because nobody feels they have the authority and/or
expertise to make potentially controversial decisions), but for many
of them, that's not a particularly bad thing. For others, the world
has moved on around them and they becomes traps for the unwary, but
still, taking the modules out is unwarranted, since we'd be breaking
code without giving affected users a good alternative (for orphan
modules, nobody is likely to take the time to maintain them on PyPI if
they weren't willing to do so in the stdlib - this actually stands in
stark *contrast* to the bsddb case, which was decidedly *not* an
orphan module when it was removed).

Regards,
Nick.

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