[Python-ideas] PEP: Distributing a Subset of the Standard Library

[Paul Moore]

On 29 November 2016 at 10:51, Wolfgang Maier
<wolfgang.maier at biologie.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
> On 29.11.2016 10:39, Paul Moore wrote:
>>
>> On 28 November 2016 at 22:33, Steve Dower <steve.dower at python.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Given that, this wouldn't necessarily need to be an executable file. The
>>> finder could locate a "foo.missing" file and raise ModuleNotFoundError
>>> with
>>> the contents of the file as the message. No need to allow/require any
>>> Python
>>> code at all, and no risk of polluting sys.modules.
>>
>>
>> I like this idea. Would it completely satisfy the original use case
>> for the proposal? (Or, to put it another way, is there any specific
>> need for arbitrary code execution in the missing.py file?)
>>
>
> The only thing that I could think of so far would be cross-platform
> .missing.py files that query the system (e.g. using the platform module) to
> generate adequate messages for the specific platform or distro. E.g.,
> correctly recommend to use dnf install or yum install or apt install, etc.

Yeah. I'd like to see a genuine example of how that would be used in
practice, otherwise I'd be inclined to suggest YAGNI. (Particularly
given that this PEP is simply a standardised means of vendor
customisation - for special cases, vendors obviously still have the
capability to patch or override standard behaviour in any way they
like).

Paul