[Python-ideas] Add from __experimental__ import bla [was: Should we move to replace re with regex?]

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 8:05 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2011, at 12:45 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>
>>The key benefit lies in ensuring that anything in the mooted
>>experimental namespace is clearly under python-dev's aegis from at
>>least the following perspectives:
>>- licensing (i.e. redistributed by the PSF under a Contributor
>>Licensing Agreement)
>>- testing (i.e. the module test suites are run on the python.org
>>buildbot fleet and results published via
>>http://www.python.org/dev/buildbot)
>>- issue management (i.e. bugs and feature requests are handled on
>>http://bugs.python.org)
>>- source control (i.e. the master repository for the software is
>>published on http://hg.python.org)
>>
>>Those are the things that will allow the experimental modules to be
>>used under existing legal approvals that allow the use of Python
>>itself (e.g. in a corporate or governmental environment).
>
> In the face of PEP 402, how could you enforce that?  Even if you can't or
> don't want to enforce it, how would a user be able to verify that it was the
> case for something in experimental?

I'm sorry, I don't follow. The experimental package would only contain
code distributed as part of the stdlib, and the code put in the
stdlib's experimental package would get the same care from the core
developers as the rest of the stdlib. The only difference would be
that we'd drop the guarantee that the APIs offered would still be
present in the next release (i.e. from 3.3 -> 3.4; the guarantees
would hold from 3.3.1 -> 3.3.2).

I hope I'm not contradicting myself?

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