[Python-Dev] DRAFT: pydev summary for 2006-12-01 to 2006-12-15 (original) (raw)

Calvin Spealman ironfroggy at gmail.com
Mon Jan 8 09:30:42 CET 2007

============= Announcements

Some of you may know that Steven Bethard, having taken over the summaries from Brett Cannon some time ago, is no longer able to keep up with them. After much holiday stress and busy days, I've come to take over this honor and archive all the goings on here. I hope I can do a good job, and allow the summaries to continue being a useful and transparent fixture.

Also, after catching up with my backlog of summary work, I plan to begin the first summaries of python-3000 (and, possibly, but not likely, the python- ideas list), as more and more actual work, rather than debating and theory-talk, is going on there.

Sincerly, Your new summary writer, Calvin Spealman

========= Summaries

[NPERS] Re: a feature i'd like to see in python #2: indexing of match objects

Subscripting re match objects directly was proposed and the debate the waged mostly on how to deal with slicing and m.group(0) to be the entire match. The consensus seemed to be that returning a match object would break, largely because m[1:2][0] != m[1], which breaks intuition with slices. Returning a list as a slice also breaks the intuitions about the type of a slice.

Contributing thread:

Python and the Linux Standard Base (LSB)

Discussions about how to properly document the expected Python environment for all LSB compliant distributions continued shortly. Focus was on how distros have a need to split the standard library up, even if the entire thing is eventually installed, and issues such as Tkinter requiring X leading to standard modules being ommitted for flexable packages.

Contributing thread:

[Python-checkins] MSI being downloaded 10x more than all other files?!

Guido was impressed with out download numbers on Windows, but most people just attributed it to other platforms including and mirroring Python. Even taking that to consideration, the ratio of Windows to source downloads has shifted in Windows favor a good bit. The use of Python in introductory courses at MIT was mentioned as something to push these numbers further in the near future.

Contributing thread:

a feature i'd like to see in python #1: better iteration control

The request was made to allow direct deletion of items from iterables through the iterator, but the idea was deemed unscalable to iterables in general and broken with dictionaries. The solutions to work around the problem were given and generally agreed to be sufficient (such as copying all the items you want to keep, instead).

Contributing thread:

LSB: Binary compatibility

The other side of the LSB issue was discussed, related to the CPython ABI, the .pyc bytecode and the marshall formats, and exactly which versions of Python may or may not gain a standard ABI, as well as how to carry this forward to future (already existing and evolving) version of Python. Some mention was made of the difficulties and conflicts being brought on by the idea of LSB standards for Python, while the benefits of this were challenged.

Contributing thread:

Adding resume (206) support to urllib(2)

Daniel Watkins asked about adapting his HTTP resuming support into urllib, but suggestions directly moved this to urllib2 and then to httplib. The conversation quickly drifted into talking about how abstract and minimal the urllib(2) should be, while the httplib module may grow increasing complex and feature supporting. The original poster made no final comment on his intentions to follow through with the patch.

Contributing thread:

str and unicode

The details of what an object's str() method must return were inquired. Must the string returned by a str or any basestring? It was announced to allow unicode objects, with no restriction on content. However, the caution that the return is likely to be encoded into the default encoding was given.

Contributing thread:

LSB: Selection of a Python version

Martin v. Lowis announced that LSB will likely move forward with Python 2.4 as the first LSB standard Python version. How to handle future bug patches, as well as the comfort of the distributions for being required to support an outdated package (2.4 is already "retired") was considered. The consensus settled on a documented support for 2.4 moving forward with security patches, and likely even 2.3, as security patches are rare enough to not cause too many cycles to be spent on them.

Contributing thread:

Threading, atexit, and logging

A bug (#1566280) was previously reported, related to the ordering of the atexit handlers for the logging and threading modules. Participants in the thread had a general agreement that the threading module using such a user visiable mechanism for cleanup and lifetime was a bad design in the first place to be remedied.

Contributing thread:

Creating dicts from dict subclasses

A common problem of subclassing built-in types (dict, in this case) arose trying to move weakref.WeakValueDictionary to a subclass of dict, rather than UserDict.

[NOTE: Could someone give a better description of this? I don't know enough of the issue here to write any content full enough. Thanks.]

Contributing thread:

OT: World's oldest ritual discovered. Worshipped the python 70, 000 years ago

This was a quick and off-topic post about other instances of python symbolism in ancient humanity, including a definition of our word "pythonic" to mean "prophetic", which seems fitting enough.

Contributing thread:

LSB: pyc stability

The LSB meetings brought up the issue of standardized bytecode formats, again. This has always been something discouraged from Python. Keeping the bytecode format free and the implementation open to ignoring old versions, has always been helpful for maintanence and development. The common reasoning of protecting IP was used, although most in-the-know consider this to be a false sense of security. Reguardless, it might be useful in legal ways, as trade secrets do require a reasonable attempt at hidding them in order to be recognized as such.

The possible solution of importing encypted zip packages with a custom import hook was proposed and seems logical.

Contributing thread:

features i'd like [Python 3000?] ... #4: interpolated strings ala perl

Perl/PHP style string interpolation was brought up, but is found unreasonable for various reasons. Cons include the use of format strings in scopes outside where they are defined, the dangers of eval, and possibly the general resisting of any idea coming from Perl. This seems a highly unlikely proposal.

Contributing thread:

Polling with Pending Calls?

Issues with the RPM library blocking interupts for long periods of time were brought up with proposed fixes by patching the rpmlib bindings to "automagically" poll for any pending calls. An existing patch was suggested but did not seem to fit the case at hand.

Contributing thread:

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

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