[Python-Dev] Rewriting PEP4 (original) (raw)

Anthony Baxter anthony at interlink.com.au
Tue Dec 7 02:31:13 CET 2004

On Tuesday 07 December 2004 11:43, Raymond Hettinger wrote:

> Modules that have currently deprecation messages in them often > fail to identify the Python version in which removal will occur. > For modules that have been deprecated since 2.1, I would suggest > to remove them for 2.5, with the option of bringing them back > in 2.5.1 if people complain.

[...] Also, we need to shy away from the idea of having 2.5.1 with different capabilities than 2.5. This sort of thing is a portability disaster. Anthony, please speak up.

Sorry - been a bit busy the last few days. Raymond is right here - there's no way we can or should do this. A bugfix release contains bugfixes. Making new modules available in a bugfix is a sucky sucky approach. Worse - once we remove a module, it should stay removed. Otherwise, we're going to end up with crap like:

 if sys.version < (2,5) or sys.version >= (2,6):
      import froggie
 else:
      # froggie was removed in 2.5 and reinstated in 2.6
      from compat import froggie

and people will be shipping their own versions of the code to get around our misfeature.

-- Anthony Baxter <anthony at interlink.com.au> It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

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