[stdlib-sig] Breaking out the stdlib

[Michael Foord]

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> Michael Foord wrote:
>   
>> M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>>     
>>> I don't really understand how breaking something as useful as
>>> the stdlib into smaller pieces would help with anything.
>>>
>>> The main purpose of a library is that you have an *integrated* set
>>> of modules that are known and tested to work together.
>>>
>>> The stdlib has gone a long way in trying to achieve that and it's
>>> getting better at it with every release.
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> The particular motivation is to make it easier for other implementations
>> to reuse the standard library. It was something discussed (with the
>> maintainers of some of these implementations) at the Python Language
>> Summit.
>>     
>
> The stdlib already has a lot of support for different Python
> implementation built right into the code.
>
> There will always be some things that don't work in certain
> implementations, but if that's the problem, we could just
> add an assert at the top of the module or raise an ImportError
> to warn the user.
>
>   
The maintainers of the other implementations felt it would be simpler to 
track the standard library if it was maintained in a separate 
repository, which wasn't felt to be a problem by the Python 
core-developers. The standard library would continue to include code to 
maintain compatibility (where possible) with alternative implementations.

Michael

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