[Python-Dev] cpython: Rename contextlib.ignored() to contextlib.ignore().

[Victor Stinner]

2013/10/16 Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettinger at gmail.com>:
> FWIW, here's a little history:

Thank you! It helped me to understand the story.

> * In February, I presented ignore() in the keynote for the U.S. Pycon.
>   Again, the feedback was positive.

I missed this edition of Pycon US. How did you feedback on the keynote?

> To each participant, it may not seem like bike-shedding, but there
> were almost a hundred emails in this thread just to kick around six lines
> of code that were checked-in seven months ago:

Sorry but you cannot summarize this thread to this only point (the
name). Many other topics were discussed:

* process: most votes were negative on the tracker, Nick didn't
mention that he blesssed this function
* surprising behaviour when the block contains more than 1 instruction
* documentation issue
* should we add new functions in Python just to remove 2 lines of code?
* possibility of storing the catched exception
* etc.

If you disagree with the principle of discussing new features, you
missed probably an important part of the Python community. The process
is not perfect, don't hesisate to suggest enhancement :-)

The discussion only started recently (after the function was added)
because it started on python-dev which is more visible than the bug
tracker.

--

Antoine also asked me recently to revert a commit (new malloc API)
because it was not discussed enough (so you are not the only one to be
harassed by Antoine :-)). I tried to describe my choices on
python-dev, but it was hard to follow the flow of emails, so I wrote a
PEP (PEP 445). The PEP was quickly accepted, the code is back, BUT the
API is now *much* better, and the PEP is a good documentation
explaining all technicals choices. (There were many alternatives to
the proposed API, the PEP now lists all of them.) I can now say that
my first API was no well designed, and the PEP helped me to improve
it.

It is frustrating to have to revert a commit, it should not happen. My
patch was available since many weeks (months), but Antoine was right:
it was not discussed enough. I don't know yet how to get more review
on the bug tracker, sometimes even emails to python-dev are not
enough. It depends on the motivation and availability of each
developer :-)

Victor