[Python-Dev] ElementTree in stdlib (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Tue Dec 13 09:59:41 CET 2005

Mike Brown wrote:

My fears are just that 1. XML-SIG is being seen as either irrelevant or as an obstacle (perhaps due to the friction between Fredrik and Uche) and are thus being sidestepped, and 2. other libs that could/should be contenders (Amara and 4Suite are not in this list, by the way) are going to become further marginalized by virtue of the fact that people will say "well, we have ElementTree in stdlib already, why do we need (fill in the blank)?"

And if they say so, they might be right! I firmly believe that the standard library should be a community-driven thing, not a committee-driven one. For that, two things need to happen for a library to become included:

  1. the author of the library must explicitly offer it for inclusion. there is no point in "hijacking" the package into the library, even if the package license would allow to do so (factually, it typically doesn't, because it typically doesn't allow redistribution under a different license). So without the author's explicit endorsement, and promise to maintain it for some time (or some other set of people offering that), nothing will happen to (fill in the blank).
  2. the users must indicate that they want to see the package as part of the library. Again, just that the author would like to contribute it isn't enough - there must be people supporting the inclusion of the package.

Traditionally, we had a third step: 3. The BDFL must pronounce inclusion of the package. Now, while Guido has a firm vision for how the language proper should evolve, he often indicated that he can't really comment on some specific library because he doesn't know anything about the functionality it provides. So in the case of libraries, this requirement often is waived.

I suppose the same kind of implicit endorsements were given to minidom and SAX, and that obviously hasn't prevented people from going out and using ElementTree, lxml, etc., so I don't know... I can't predict the future. I'd just feel better about it if everyone on XML-SIG, where people hang out because they have a definite interest in this kind of thing, knew what was going on. Some authors of other libs may not even be aware that they could so easily have their code whisked into stdlib, if it's solid enough.

That's part of the process. They could have read PEP 2, so they could have known to write a PEP and get it discussed. When they don't know that, they fail the basic test of "author support": if the author isn't really behind the integration of the package, the package really shouldn't be integrated (this is why I first predicted ElementTree would never become part of the library, because I assumed /F would not like the idea).

Regards, Martin

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