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

[Collin Winter]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 7:47 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 15:40, Jim Baker <jbaker at zyasoft.com> wrote:
>> +1 - I don't want Python being like Java where the only deprecation that
>> occurs is when code is actively harmful - and it still won't be removed for
>> backwards compatibility's sake.
>
> The deprecation would be permanent, so it won't be like Java where we
> support stuff only until we consider it harmful. And unlike Java we
> would not keep the docs around forever, suggesting that you can just
> simply ignore what the docs say. The modules would eventually
> disappear from people's knowledge.

If we allow the code to survive, eventually someone will need to
maintain an application that uses the deprecated, now-docless module.
If I were that person, I would curse the names of whoever left the
code there but removed the docs and allowed bugs to creep in (if the
module disappears from people's knowledge, it will likely disappear
from our consciousness).

Honest question, having only read the docs about argparse: would it be
possible to merge the functionality of argparse into optparse and so
preserve a greater measure of backwards compatibility? Some of the
stuff I'm reading about in
http://argparse.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/argparse-vs-optparse.html
looks like it should be able to be integrated fairly easily into the
existing optparse structure.

Collin Winter