[Python-ideas] Introducing PEP 434 -- IDLE Enhancement Exception for All Branches

[Terry Reedy]

On 2/20/2013 9:30 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
>> On Feb 20, 2013, at 04:10 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>>> We could have a stable version of IDLE in the std lib, and another
>>> version available on PyPI. The PyPI version could change more rapidly,
>>> since it doesn't have to fit in with the release schedule for the std
>>> lib. As the release schedule allows, the two branches could be merged.
>>>
>>> I have no idea if this has been tried before, but I think this would
>>> work better for an application like IDLE than for a library.
>>
>> There's some precedence for this I think, e.g. mock, unittest2, email.
>
> This was the plan for packaging vs distutils2, and I'll be proposing
> something similar for distlib, too.
>
> It can be a little tricky to manage at times, but you can do truly
> experimental features in the PyPI version first with a warning that
> they're experimental (e.g the various incarnations
> contextlib.ExitStack went through when I first added it to
> contextlib2), while bug fixes and features you're more confident about
> can go directly into hg.python.org and then be published early through
> the downstream project.

Most of the actual issues that prompted this proposal are minor changes, 
such as to the find or replace dialog. Some might even be considered bug 
fixes rather than enhancements, depending on one's interpretation of the 
vague doc for such. This PEP is partly about whether we need to classify 
such changes, or just put them into whatever release we feel 
appropriate. Whatever the decision, those changes should directly go 
into whatever version they are going to go in.

On the other hand, I agree that a PyPI preview release of a rewrite of 
IDLE to use the newer ttk widgets would be a good idea. But I personally 
would base such a project on 3.3 and consider whether it should require 
tcl/tk 8.6 rather than 8.5. And I would only put it in the stdlib in a 
new release (perhaps alongside the existing IDLE for at least one 
release). So this PEP is not relevance to such a project.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy