Opinions please -- how big should a single module grow?

Stefan Behnel stefan_ml at behnel.de
Fri Jul 9 00:48:40 EDT 2010


Steven D'Aprano, 09.07.2010 06:37:
> This is a style question rather than a programming question.
>
> How large (how many KB, lines, classes, whatever unit of code you like to
> measure in) should a module grow before I should break it up into a
> package? I see that, for example, decimal.py is>  3000 lines of code, so
> I can assume that 3 KLOC is acceptable. Presumably 3000 KLOC is not.
> Where do you draw the line?
>
> For the purposes of the discussion, you should consider that the code in
> the module really does belong together, and that splitting it into sub-
> modules would mean arbitrarily separating code into separate files.

Well, if that's the case, then there's no reason to split it up. However, 
for any module of substantial growth, I'd expect there to be some point 
where you start adding section separation comments (Meta-80-#) to make the 
structure clearer. That might be the time when you should also consider 
breaking it up into separate source files.

Stefan




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