[Python-Dev] address manipulation in the standard lib (original) (raw)

Duncan McGreggor duncan.mcgreggor at gmail.com
Mon Jan 5 18:10:32 CET 2009

Last Fall, Guido opened a ticket to include Google's ipaddr.py in the standard lib: http://bugs.python.org/issue3959

There has been some recent discussion on that ticket, enough so that it might benefit everyone if it was moved on to the dev list. I do recommend reading that ticket, though -- lots of good perspectives are represented.

The two libraries that are being discussed the most for possible inclusion are the following:

The most immediately obvious differences between the two are:

That's a quick proto-assessment based on looking at examples and unit tests and didn't include a thorough evaluation of the code itself.

Martin provided some very nice guidelines in a comment on the ticket:

"I think Guido's original message summarizes [what we need]: a module that fills a gap for address manipulations... In addition, it should have all the organisational qualities (happy user base, determined maintainers, copyright forms, documentation, tests). As to what precisely its API should be - that is for the experts (i.e. you) to determine. I personally think performance is important, in addition to a well-designed, useful API. Conformance to PEP 8 is also desirable."

I'm planning to chat with both David Moss (netaddr) and Peter Moody (ipaddr) on the mail lists about API details, and I encourage others to do this as well. As for this list, it's probably important to define the limits of the desired feature set for an ip address manipulation library:

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