[Python-Dev] Deprecating the formatter module

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2013 14:22:01 -0700
Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> 
> > At the PyCon CA sprint someone discovered the formatter module had
> > somewhat low code coverage. We discovered this is because it's tested by
> > test_sundry, i.e. it's tested by importing it and that's it.
> >
> > We then realized that it isn't really used by anyone (pydoc uses it but it
> > should have been using textwrap). Looking at the history of the module it
> > has just been a magnet for cleanup revisions and not actual usage or
> > development since Guido added it back in 1995.
> >
> > I have created http://bugs.python.org/issue18716 to deprecate the
> > formatter module for removal in Python 3.6 unless someone convinces me
> > otherwise that deprecation and removal is the wrong move.
> >
> 
> I wish we had a way to collect real-world usage on such things. I tried a
> couple of code search engines, but this one is difficult to unravel because
> many Python packages have their own formatter module (for example Django,
> pygments) that probably does something different.

"Ohloh code search" shows a couple matches for AbstractFormatter in
Python projects:
http://code.ohloh.net/search?s=%22AbstractFormatter%22&pp=0&fl=Python&mp=1&ml=1&me=1&md=1&ff=1&filterChecked=true