[Python-ideas] sys.path is a hack - bringing it back under control

[Nick Coghlan]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 1:37 PM, alex23 <wuwei23 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 20, 11:18 pm, anatoly techtonik <techto... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> tl;dr :(
>
> You're _constantly_ bemoaning the "obvious" lack of clear
> communication paths in the Python community, and yet when you're
> pointed to an _explicit piece of documentation that answers your
> concerns_ you can't even be bothered to read it.
>
> It's pretty damn "obvious" that your only real issue with
> communication is when it isn't being spoon fed to you.

In Anatoly's defence (and as he clarified in a later message), PEP 395
really *didn't* answer his question, and he had made his way through
quite a bit of it (and PEP 3155, which it references) before giving up
on trying to figure out how it was relevant - I had simply
misunderstood the original email.

After I *did* understand it, I pointed out that investigating
unexpected or undesirable modifications to mutable containers when the
data changes aren't enough to pinpoint the culprit is actually one of
the valid use cases for monkeypatching rather than a reason to change
the language behaviour. (That said, there are other, more valid,
arguments in favour of providing a notification mechanism for sys.path
changes, mainly relating to namespace packages. That's a different
discussion, though, and one more appropriate for import-sig).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia