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

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:14 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull
<stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> Guido van Rossum writes:
>  > On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> wrote:
>
>  > > Are you rejecting PEP 380?
>  >
>  > No, just deferring it. It didn't make Python 3.1 so I think we'll have
>  > to live without it for a long time no matter what. It could be
>  > revisited once the moratorium is lifted (for 3.3 or 3.4).
>
> Would it be useful to allow work on it, maybe including a deferred
> approval (ie, PEP is approved for implementation in version 3.3 [or
> "when the moratorium is lifted"]), to proceed on a branch?  Branches
> will be very cheap in hg.  I realize this may "bring work forward" for
> you and other interested parties, on the other hand I think there is a
> "strike while the iron's hot" aspect for implementators of the PEP.
>
> In particular, having a working and approved feature on a branch would
> allow those interested in the deferred PEP to merge into a (private)
> fresh branch for compatibility testing of the work being done on the
> mainline.

I'd be okay with this, for the specific case of PEP 380. The work was
all done but there was remaining discussion about precise semantics,
which dragged the approval out enough to miss the 2.6 release. Looking
back I still don't think the arguments put forward by a Danish
gentleman (whose name I've forgotten, sorry) are worth the
complications in semantics and implementation; but if there was a
branch and some people tried to use it for real code it would be a lot
easier to tell (especially if there were two branches implementing the
competing proposals).

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)