Inconsistencies between zipfile and tarfile APIs

[rantingrick]

On Jul 22, 3:49 am, Lars Gustäbel <l... at gustaebel.de> wrote:

> One could get the impression that you are leading a grass-roots movement
> fighting a big faceless corporation. Instead, what you're dealing with is this
> warm and friendly Python community you could as well be a part of if you are a
> reasonable guy and write good code.

Sometimes i do feel as if i am fighting against an evil empire. I am a
reasonable guy and i do write -good-, no excellent code.

> Yeah, great. Please write code. Or a PEP.

I am not about to just hop through all the hoops of PEP and PEP8 code
just to have someone say "Sorry, we are not going to include your
code". What i want at this point is to get feedback from everyone
about this proposed archive.py module. Because unlike other people, i
don't want to ram MY preferred API down others throats.

Step one is getting feedback on the idea of including a new archive
module. Step two is hammering out an acceptable API spec. Step three
is is actually writing the code and finally getting it accepted into
the stdlib.

Not only do i need feedback from everyday Python scripters, i need
feedback from Python-dev. I even need feedback from the great GvR
himself! (maybe not right away but eventually).

> > What this community needs (first and foremost) is some positive
> > attitudes. If you don't want to write the code fine. But at least
> > chime in and say... "Hey guys, that's a good idea! I would like to see
> > some of these APIs cleaned up too. good luck! +1"
>
> +1

Thank you! Now, can you convince your comrades at pydev to offer their
opinions here also? Even if all they do is say "+1".

> > Now, even if we get one hundred people chanting... "Yes, Yes, Fix This
> > Mess!"... i know Guido and company are going to frown because of
> > backwards incompatibility. But let me tell you something people, the
> > longer we put off these changes the more painful they are going to
> > be.
>
> And backwards compatibility is bad why? Tell me, what exactly is your view
> towards this? Should there be none?

First let me be clear that "backwards-compatibility" (BC) is very
important to any community. We should always strive for BC. However
there is no doubt we are going to make mistakes along the way and at
some point SOME APIs will need to be broken in the name of consistency
or some other important reason.

As i've said before Py3000 would have been the PERFECT opportunity to
fix this broken API within the current zipfile and tarfile modules.
Since that did not happen, we must now introduce a new module
"archive.py" and deprecate the zip and tar modules immediately. We
shall remove them forever in Python4000.

If you guys think we are done breaking BC,  you are in for big
surprises! Py3000 was just the beginning of clean-ups.  Py4000 is
going to be a game changer! And when we finally get to Py4000 and
remove all these ugly warts python is going to be a better language
for it. Mark my words people!

> archive.py is no new idea. Unfortunately, to this day, nobody had the time to
> come up with an implementation.

It's time to change;
Can't stay the same;
Rev-o-lu-tion is MY name!

We can never become complacent and believe we have reached perfection
because we never will.