[Python-Dev] Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] The versioning question... (original) (raw)

Eric Nieuwland eric.nieuwland at xs4all.nl
Tue Dec 28 09:22:08 CET 2004

Martin v. Löwis wrote:

Eric Nieuwland wrote:

Would it be an idea to submit a PEP for extending the 'import' keyword? No. Normally, packages should aim for backwards compatibility, so that applications would only want to specify a minimum version, such as import xml assert xml.versioninfo > (0,8,2) If you really want side-by-side installation of different versions, and a mechanism to select between them, the package could support import xml082 as xml IOW, "import-as" should be sufficient for what you want to achieve.

Unless you are doing comparison tests, where it would be nice to be able to state in a generic way that the new implementation should not change answers. May be something like:

import spam[1] as spamnext # next version import spam[0] as spamnow # current version

assert spamnow.Ni() == spamnext.Ni()

--eric

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