Thoughts on some stdlib modules

[Terry Hancock]

On Sunday 10 April 2005 05:14 pm, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> I'm not talking about things that absolutely have to be in the Python
> interpreter core; I'm talking about things that *could* be bundled
> with the standard distribution, *without* having to be relicensed,
> or be forever maintained by the CPython developers.
> 
> (the Linux distributors know how to do this: look for good stuff that's
> either actively maintained or simple and solid enough to live for a while,
> make sure the licenses are good enough, bundle the latest and greatest
> version, ship tested versions at regular intervals, update when necessary,
> and pass bugs and patches upstream.  why not use the same approach
> for Python's standard distribution?)

That sounds like a suggestion that there should be a "greater python"
distribution --- python itself, the standard libraries (now released together
as the "python distribution"), and the most commonly used Python
packages (which presumeably would include the current free PIL, Numeric (or
Numarray more likely), and so on.

One might argue that Linux distributions are already doing this -- Debian
does something like it, for example.  But there would be a greater cross-
platform consistency if such a super-distribution existed.  I can imagine
it would be particularly valuable to Windows users who can't benefit from
the Linux packaging operations.

I guess the other thing to compare to is something like SciPy, which is
a kind of specialized distribution of Python for scientific applications.

Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com