[stdlib-sig] standardizing the deprecation policy (and how noisy they are)

[geremy condra]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 4:01 AM, Georg Brandl <g.brandl at gmx.net> wrote:
> Yuvgoog Greenle schrieb:
>> On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 11:18 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>>> First, there is the app user perspective. If I use an application I do
>>> not need to see any warnings, ever.
>>
>> So it comes down to either:
>>
>> A. As things are - every ballsy app developer has to have this piece
>> of code laying around:
>>     import warnings
>>     warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")
>>
>> or
>>
>> B. we render warnings useless in our every day python lives except for
>> package buildbots that remember to run with -w (or whatever).
>
> On the contrary, I think that DeprecationWarnings will become much more
> useful when silenced by default, because people will use them *more*.
> >From experience, when thinking about emitting DeprecationWarnings in Sphinx,
> which is a command-line tool, I often don't bother, because *it still works
> anyway* and I don't want Sphinx users to see a screenful of warnings when
> just building their docs.

If you don't feel like your users need that information, don't give it to them.
Same thing goes for both sphinx and python in general.

> If DeprecationWarnings were silenced by default, I (and probably others too)
> would put them into the code more liberally, because I know that *when* they
> are displayed, they are displayed to someone who actually *wants* to fix the
> code that causes them.
>
> Of course I could use the "filterwarnings" incantation given above, but that
> defeats the purpose of the -W command line option, and *globally* silences
> warnings I don't even want to control.

Please read the documentation, you can filter what and how you
want.

>> I would like a demographic on this, but I'm sure that either way
>> muting warnings will be a devastating blow to the spread of
>> information about what's new/old in python.
>
> Please stop trying to seed FUD.
>
> Most Python developers are flexible enough to get to know and use a new and
> useful tool when they are made aware of it, and using -w is a very simple
> tool.

But also an unnecessary one. Everything you've described can
be done simply and without changing python's behavior. There's
just no need to make the change.

Geremy Condra