[Python-Dev] python-dev Summary for 2004-11-01 through 2004-11-15 [draft] (original) (raw)

Brett C. bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Sat Dec 18 06:10:21 CET 2004

Now I am only a month behind.

Won't send this out any earlier than Monday night, but probably won't be until Tuesday.

===================== Summary Announcements

I am hoping to be caught up with my summary backlog by the end of the month. Hear is to hoping.

========= Summaries

2.4 released

Python 2.4_ has been released! Read the What's New_ for 2.4 to see what the major changes are since 2.3 .

.. _Python 2.4: http://www.python.org/2.4/ .. _What's New: http://www.python.org/doc/2.4/whatsnew/whatsnew24.html

Contributed threads:

Code coverage of the regression tests

Walter Dörwald has a code coverage tool that runs once a month on Python's regression test at http://coverage.livinglogic.de/ . There was some issue with the 'trace' module having partially broken in 2.4 . The coverage was then run using Lib/test/regrtest.py -T to get more accurate numbers.

Contributing threads:

Garbage collecting weakref callbacks

Tim Peters discovered that in 2.4 if a weakref's callback is still reachable but the referent and weakref itself are unreachable (Tim's example had an instance that contained a weakref to itself) that the callback is not called during garbage collection. This seemed inconsistent since if the weakref in Tim's example was replaced with an instance that contained a del method that the method would have been called.

Tim would like to clean this up so as to be able to ditch del methods in Python 3000. The idea is that one would register a weakref with a callback for an object in itself that would be called when it is garbage collected. This would also negate the need for gc.garbage .

Contributing threads:

PEP Watch

PEP 336_ introduces the idea of having None be a callable object. The result that calling None would return None itself.

.. _PEP 336: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0336.html

Contributing threads:

Discussion of including pysqlite in the stdlib

The idea of including pysqlite_ in the stdlib came up once again (not this is the wrapper for SQLite_ and not SQLite itself). The arguments for including the module were the SQLite is most likely used more than Sleepycat and thus deserved a place in the stdlib if bsddb did. It also goes along with Python's idea of "batteries included".

Arguments against started with the idea of sanctioning pysqlite over other SQLite wrappers did not seem proper. People also thought that including bsddb might not be correct anymore and thus should not be used as a basis for including pysqlite.

This all then led into a discussion about package management and how to simplify extending what can be installed at compile-time. The idea of pushing PyPI_ came up as well as revising PEP 206_.

.. _pysqlite: http://pysqlite.org/ .. _SQLite: http://www.sqlite.org/ .. _PyPI: http://www.python.org/pypi .. _PEP 206: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0206.html

Contributing threads:

2.3 maintenance coming to an end

With Python 2.4 out, maintaining 2.3 is no longer a priority. Anthony Baxter, our beloved release manager, has said that 2.3.5 will be most likely coming out in January. After that, though, don't count on another 2.3 release since 2.4 will take its place as the version to maintain.

All of this came about by the fact that Facundo Batista asked if closing 2.1 bugs was okay. As long as they have been fixed in the earliest version being maintained, closing them is fine. This goes for 2.2 as well. And as soon as 2.3.5 is out the door will most likely apply to 2.3 bugs.

Contributing threads:

Sync/async servers in the stdlib and whether they should be there

There are multiple servers in the core for handling communications in both a synchronous and asynchronous manner. The idea came up of developing an API that all servers could follow in the core. While the discussion went back and forth with multiple mentions of PEAK, Twisted, and greenlets_, in the end the trend of the discussion suggested doing this well would be very difficult and not worth the effort. asyncore and asynchat also seemed to be deemed worth deprecation and thus not worth using.

.. _PEAK: http://peak.telecommunity.com/ .. _Twisted: http://www.twistedmatrix.com/ .. _greenlets: http://codespeak.net/svn/user/arigo/greenlet/

Contributing threads:

Getting the opcode count for rough profile numbers

The idea was proposed of introducing sys.gettickeraccumulation which would contain the number of opcodes executed since the interpreter started. The idea is that you can get a rough estimate of how much time is being spent in Python code. The value of this has wavered back and forth with no clear answer.

Contributing threads:

Contributing threads:

=============== Skipped Threads

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