[stdlib-sig] Maintenance of optparse

[Brett Cannon]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:35, Armin Ronacher
<armin.ronacher at active-4.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Brett Cannon wrote:
>> Now I know you said in another email that you meant for this to be ""I
>> would only *continue* to maintain optparse is argparse does not end up
>> in the standard library", but that still feels like I am being
>> politically pushed around and I don't like that, especially when
>> argparse already exists and this proposal is hypothetical.

> Open Source turns out to be very political unfortunately,

Tell me about it.

> and I'm of
> course driven my politics as well.  I have not chosen my words carefully
> and I'm sorry if that causes you to think I try to push around anyone.

Glad you aren't.

>
>> Depends on how you want to do that. If you are suggesting creating
>> your own i18n solution that precludes gettext, then no as that is the
>> current solution in the standard library and you shouldn't try to
>> exclude it. If you want it to be pluggable enough such that gettext or
>> any other solution can be used, then fine.

> Django and Babel still use gettext without a global context, the way
> this would change is that you can provide your own translator when
> creating the option parser.
>

As long as it can be used w/o modification then that's fine.

>> But ignoring your criteria, Armin, python-dev has the criteria that
>> you get commit privileges and I am not sure if you will get them
>> because of lack of participation on python-dev and the issue tracker.
>> Until you get commit privileges I can't take this seriously.

> I ended up with commit privileges a while ago, but don't take me serious
> because of that.  No matter if I would have commit privileges or not, my
> offer is serious and I would do so either way *because* I want to see
> Python improve.  So far I only complained about the standard library and
> it would only be fair to start improving it.

I'm glad this is motivating you!

Here is my perspective. I want Steven to move forward w/ trying to get
argparse in, which means he has to write a PEP to propose his
inclusion. If you manage to get optparse into a place where argprase
is not needed, then at worst Steven has written a PEP that will be
rejected and he can potentially stop working on argparse and switch to
your refactored optparse. But I have seen too many well-intentioned
people come along and say they really want to do something and not
finish (because of time, turned out not to be doable, etc.). I am not
saying I think you personally will more than likely fail, Armin, as I
don't know you personally. But as a rule, I assume no one ever follows
through until they have proven to me otherwise. That's why I am not
willing to promise you that argparse will not go in or that I am
willing to tell Steven to not try to get argparse in. But if you pull
off what you are suggesting and you and Steven can get optparse to get
what argparse has then there won't be a need to add argparse.

-Brett