[Python-Dev] Raising objections (original) (raw)

A.M. Kuchling amk at amk.ca
Thu Apr 20 15:33:43 CEST 2006

On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 07:53:55AM +0200, "Martin v. Löwis" quoted:

> It is flatly not possible to "fix" distutils and preserve backwards > compatibility.

Would it be possible to figure what parts are problematic, and introduce PendingDeprecationWarnings or DeprecationWarnings so that we can fix things?

> Sometimes you have to rewrite. I point to > urllib->urllib2, asyncore->twisted, rfc822/mimelib/&c->email.

If I had the time, I would question each of these. Yes, it is easier for the author of the new package to build "in the green", but it is (nearly) never necessary, and almost always bad for the project.

I don't mind rewriting much, but hate leaving the original code in place; this is confusing to new users, even if it's convenient for existing users. How many HTML parsers are in the core now? (My gut feeling is that that Python's adoption curve has flattened, so it's probably now more important to keep existing users happy, so the time for jettisoning modules may be past.)

--amk

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