[Python-ideas] Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes

[Georg Brandl]

MRAB schrieb:
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> wrote:
>>> [Guido van Rossum]
>>>> Note, the moratorium would only cover the language itself plus
>>>> built-in functions, not the standard library.
>>> That makes sense.
>>>
>>> There may be a few areas that still have some rough edges where you
>>> may want to allow changes if needed (tweaks to the nested with-statement
>>> syntax, bytes/text interaction, star-args unpacking, or string formatting).
>>> These areas probably have not been exercised much and there may still be
>>> problems that need to be ironed-out.  I don't have anything specific
>>> in mind.  Am just thinking that those features aren't yet mature.
>> 
>> No, the moratorium would freeze the language at the 3.1 version, at
>> least for 3.2 and 2.7 and possibly 3.3 (see my earlier post). Allowing
>> for exceptions like these provides too much wiggle room. (E.g is the
>> decorator syntax broken?)
>> 
>> Outright bugs in the implementation should be excepted (subject to
>> discussion) but the accepted grammar and semantics should be frozen
>> unless they are unimplementable.
>> 
> I'd like there to be the possibility of a change if we were to discover
> a case (a corner case, perhaps) where everyone agrees that what Python
> is actually doing is unPythonic due to some unforeseen combination of
> factors (and I'm not talking about mutable default parameters). Who
> knows, it could happen! :-)

Please relax. We're not going to pass a law, or institute a commit hook
that will reject each and every change to the relevant files.  Whatever
eventual form the moratorium is going to take, it does not stand above
reasonable discussion.

Georg

-- 
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