[Python-ideas] Moving development out of the standard library

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Tarek Ziadé writes:

 > If the maintainer of unittest for example, provides an upgrade for this
 > package, don't you think we can trust that he will provide a more
 > stable upgrade for the unittest package in the stdlib than another
 > project that would implement a unittest package ?

For the users who really care about this, it's not a question of
relative stability.

Either the only changes in documented behavior involve successful
completion of jobs that used to fail, or instability has been
introduced.  For many people (though a small fraction) that is *very
bad*, and they have complained vociferously in the past.

I really don't understand where the big benefits are to having minor
improvements introduced in bugfix releases.  People who want those
benefits should upgrade to a more recent series.  The people who
really need them but must stick to an older series for Python itself
can get the most recent version of the few packages that have
"must-have" improvements from PyPI.

"No behavior changes in micro releases" is an easily understood,
reasonably easily followed policy.  The policy you propose requires
judgment calls that will differ from module maintainer to module
maintainer, and every upgrade will involve discussion on python-dev.
Yuck.