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

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2011, at 09:29 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>
>>On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 8:05 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry-+ZN9ApsXKcEdnm+yROfE0A at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> 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).
>
> As long as the "guarantees" only cover code distributed in the experimental
> package with Python, that's okay.  Maybe I was reading too much into Nick's
> comment, but when third party code can situate itself under 'experimental', we
> obviously can't make those same guarantees of the code we don't distribute.

That certainly wasn't part of *my* plan any more than letting 3rd
parties install themselves anywhere else inside stdlib packages.

On the other hand it probably wouldn't matter because the review
process doesn't look at what you import -- it only looks at
dependencies (i.e. stuff that needs to be downloaded). Whether it goes
under experimental would be orthogonal -- the litmus test for "is this
covered by the PSF" would be "do I have to install it separately"
(when using a Python install built from source, so there are no
packages pre-installed by the distro).

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