[stdlib-sig] GHOP / py3k (was: Evolving the Standard Library)

[C. Titus Brown]

>Michael said:
> Armin said:
> > That, and a group of
> >people, dedicated to standard library refactoring.  The majority of
> >libraries in the standard library are small and easy to understand, I'm
> >sure they are perfectly suited for students on projects like GSOC or
> >GHOP to work on.  They could even be used as some sort of "playground"
> >for new Python developers.
> 
> It would be a great project for GHOP *if* we have some experienced 
> developers, like yourself, dedicated to working out what the things that 
> need fixing are.

Testing and doc updates worked reasonably well within GHOP last time,
and surprisingly little in the way of "experienced developers" were
needed.  Faced with the responsibility of coming up with dozens of tasks
on short notice, I picked a dozen stdlib modules and said

  test this
  integrate doug hellmann's documentation
  run through the existing examples and write more

...and voila, it happened and attracted positive notice from the BDFL,
which is saying something.

By far the most important part of that process was not my role in
putting the tasks up, but Georg's role in reviewing the patches and
committing them in a timely manner.  I can't speak for how much time he
spent doing that, however, and I certainly don't expect that level of
effort from HIM this time; perhaps with Mercurial we can get
non-committers to act as first-pass filters to reduce the strain on
Georg or whoever steps into his shoes. [0]

Perhaps this time we can focus on py3k stuff with GHOP; that'd be great,
and a real community boost, IMO.

cheers,
--titus

[0] I'm nominating Brett; he seems to have plenty of time.