[Python-Dev] PEP 408 -- Standard library __preview__ package

[Nick Coghlan]

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 5:49 PM, Matt Joiner <anacrolix at gmail.com> wrote:
> FWIW I'm now -1 for this idea. Stronger integration with PyPI and
> packaging systems is much preferable. Python core public releases are
> no place for testing.

People saying this: we KNOW this approach doesn't work in all cases.
If it worked perfectly, regex would be in the standard library by now.

Don't consider this PEP a purely theoretical proposal, because it
isn't. It's really being put forward to solve a specific problem: the
fact that we need to do something about re's lack of proper Unicode
support [1]. Those issues are actually hard to solve, so replacing re
with Matthew Barnett's regex module (just as re itself was a
replacement for the original regex module) that already addresses most
of them seems like a good way forward, but this is currently being
blocked because there are still a few lingering concerns with
maintainability and backwards compatibility.

We *need* to break the impasse preventing its inclusion in the
standard library, and __preview__ lets us do that without running
roughshod over the legitimate core developer concerns raised in the
associated tracker issue [2].

With the current criteria for stdlib inclusion, it doesn't *matter* if
a module is oh-so-close to being accepted: it gets rejected anyway,
just like a module that has no chance of ever being suitable. There is
currently *no* path forward for resolving any stdlib-specific concerns
that arise with already popular PyPI modules, and so such situations
remain unresolved and key components of the standard library stagnate.

While regex is the current poster-child for this problem, it's quite
likely that similar problems will arise in the future. Kenneth Reitz's
requests module is an obvious candidate: it's enormously popular with
users, Kenneth has indicated he's amenable to the idea of stdlib
inclusion once the feature set is sufficiently stable (i.e. not for
3.3), but I expect there will be legitimate concerns with
incorporating it, given its scope.

Cheers,
Nick.

[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue?%40search_text=&ignore=file%3Acontent&title=&%40columns=title&id=&%40columns=id&stage=&creation=&creator=tchrist&activity=&%40columns=activity&%40sort=activity&actor=&nosy=&type=&components=&versions=&dependencies=&assignee=&keywords=&priority=&%40group=priority&status=1&%40columns=status&resolution=&nosy_count=&message_count=&%40pagesize=50&%40startwith=0&%40queryname=&%40old-queryname=&%40action=search

[2] http://bugs.python.org/issue2636

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