[stdlib-sig] should we try to add argparse?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Michael Foord wrote:
> Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>>> Upfront people need to realize that we might have three argument
>>> parsing libraries for a while, but it won't be forever. If we get
>>> argparse accepted we would slowly deprecate at least optparse, if not
>>> getopt (lat time I tried to ditch getopt for Python 3 some argued that
>>> getopt supported stuff optparse didn't),
>>>     
>>
>> +0 on deprecating getopt, -1 on deprecating optparse. Breaking a
>> perfectly functional and useful module is stupid.
>>
>>   
> 
> So we're stuck with inferior technology?

If you have the choice between breaking backwards compatibility
and downloading other implementations from PyPI, I think backwards
compatibility counts more.

We've just had a major change in the stdlib for 3.x. Then the 3.0
release was ditched due to poor performance. If we now start
deprecating widely used modules in 3.2, we're going to lose
a major pro argument for using Python: that of a stable eco system
to write code for.

I don't think we should deprecate any commonly used module (in the
3.x branch) unless there's a clear and documented migration path
or -even better- a migration wrapper available for the deprecated
module.

The next major round of refactoring will have to wait for
Python 4.x.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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