[stdlib-sig] Breaking out the stdlib

[Jesse Noller]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/9/15 M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com>:
>> Laura Creighton wrote:
>>> So what do you think of this proposal?
>>
>> Good write-up and very much to the point.
>>
>> [Executive Summary:
>> Code that hardly needs any changes, because it does what it's meant
>> to do, is good code, not bad code. And it causes only minimal
>> maintenance effort, so it's actually something core developer should
>> welcome rather than fight against.]
>>
>> I'd only change the tag "dead-as-a-doornail" to "complete, proven and
>> stable". Sounds more accurate.
>
> Yes, I like both the summary, and the proposal (that standard library
> code be tagged with details like its status and its maintainer).
>
> I was in the "stdlib needs to evolve" camp, but this has clarified the
> other side of the argument, and changed my mind.
>
> I'm still in favour of new modules being added to the stdlib, and
> existing modules being updated, but I support the idea of stage C
> (dead as a doornail/complete, proven, stable) modules being retained
> indefinitely. I'm not sure what the implications of this position
> would be in the case of argparse vs optparse (optparse doesn't seem to
> be stage C, so maybe removing it in favour of argparse is an option)
> but I like the fact that this proposal gives us terminology on which
> we can base the discussion.
>
> Paul.

There is no, no such thing as a "dead/complete" module. It does not
exist. Any time there is a grammar change, a new reserved keyword, or
some other functionality change a "dead" module comes back to life and
has to be maintained.

Can we please not treat "dead/complete" modules as if they have no
maintenance burden, or drag down the code base? The reason I avoided
that terminology in the first place is that there is no such thing as
code with zero cost.

jesse