[Python-Dev] IDLE in the stdlib

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:09 AM, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:41:53 -0700, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Personally, I think that IDLE reflects badly on Python in more ways than
>> > one. It's badly maintained, quirky and ugly. It serves a very narrow
>> set of
>> > uses, and does it badly.
>> >
>> > Being part of Python *distributions* and being part of core Python
>> standard
>> > library are two different things. The former may make sense, the latter
>> > IMHO makes no sense whatsoever. Outside the Python core IDLE can be
>> > maintained more freely, with less restrictions on contributors and
>> > hopefully become a better tool.
>>
>> On the other hand, after several years of almost complete neglect,
>> we have some people interested in and actively contributing to making
>> it better *in the stdib*.  Terry has proposed a PEP for allowing it
>> to see more rapid changes than a "normal" stdlib package, and I haven't
>> perceived a lot of opposition to this.  I think Terry's PEP represents
>> less of change to how we do things than bundling an externally maintained
>> IDLE would be, especially with respect to Linux.
>>
>> FYI I talked to someone at PyCon who is not a current contributor to
>> IDLE but who is very interested in helping with it, and it sounded like
>> he had the backing of his organization to do this (it was a quick hall
>> conversation and unfortunately I did not get his name).  So we may be
>> approaching an inflection point where IDLE will start getting the love
>> that it needs.
>>
>
> The "choke point" is going to be core devs with the time and desire to
> review such contributions though. We have a relatively strict process in
> the Python core, which makes a lot of since *because* it's Python core.
> Getting things committed in Python is not easy, and even if we get a sudden
> influx of good patches (which I doubt) these will take time to review and
> get committed. In an outside project there's much less friction.
>
> IDLE would be a great first foray into this "separate project" world,
> because it is many ways a separate project.
>

+1



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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