[Python-Dev] PEP 8 updates/clarifications (original) (raw)

Phillip J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Tue Dec 13 18:00:27 CET 2005

At 03:25 PM 12/13/2005 +0000, Michael Hoffman wrote:

[Jim Fulton] > Sure, if you only have one module, and if your module doesn't do any > dynamic imports, and if the things your importing don't have dependencies, > and ... > > I think it would be simpler to have a formal dependency system.

More useful, yes, for all the reasons you listed. The fact that people are still working on a formal dependency system, however, indicates that it is not simpler.

Depends on your definition of "still working on". I'd characterize the dependency system offered by setuptools as receiving fine-tuning, rather than being under design or development. A few things have been tweaked in the last few months according to real-world feedback: breadth-first processing worked out to be better than depth-first when complex recursive dependencies are involved, and the handling of '-' in version numbers needed a minor adjustment.

In any case, the algorithms involved are near-trivial; the most complex piece is the processing of complex version specifications like "CherryPy>=2.1.0,!=2.1.1-rc2,<2.2a" into a series of version intervals.

The only outstanding feature request for the dependency resolution algorithm is supporting optional or replaceable dependencies such as "we need either scipy or Numeric".

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