[Python-Dev] please back out changeset f903cf864191 before alpha-2

[Stefan Behnel]

Antoine Pitrou, 24.08.2013 12:58:
> By the way, just know that Stefan tried to provide a patch that would
> better suit his API desires, and failed because ElementTree's current
> implementation makes it difficult to do so.

Absolutely. I agree that your current implementation is a hack that works
around these issues. That doesn't mean that they go away, though.

And yes, I even provided a half-finished implementation, even though I'm
certainly not interested enough in this feature to make much use of it. Why
don't you just take a look at my patch and finish it up?

Given that you are apparently the most ambitious supporter of this feature,
I would expect you to provide an appropriate implementation and have it
reviewed. And with "reviewed" I also mean "accept criticism". Just because
you managed to sneak in a hack doesn't mean it has to stay there once it's
uncovered.


> Someone can take the whole thing over if they want to, change the API
> and make it more shiny or different, tweak the implementation to suit
> it better to their own aesthetic sensibilities, but please don't revert
> an useful feature unless it's based on concrete, serious issues rather
> than a platonic disagreement about design.

As I said, the only reason why the current implementation is there is
"because it's there". The problems of the current iterparse implementation
should not be taken as a reason for a design decision of a new feature.
Instead, they should be fixed and the feature should be based on these fixes.

Yes, that's more work than adding a hack. But I'm sure that cleaning up
first will pay off quite quickly. I already gave lots of reasons for that.

Stefan