[Python-Dev] PEP about sys.implementation and implementation specific user site directory (original) (raw)

Christian Heimes lists at cheimes.de
Sat Oct 10 02:58:42 CEST 2009

Martin v. Löwis wrote:

sys.implementation is a PyStructSequence that contains various information about the current implementation. Some fields are required to be present on every implementation. I think it is important to confirm in advance that all the implementations listed below agree to implement the PEP "soonish" after it's adopted. "Required" sounds like a strong term - however, if an implementation chooses not to implement the PEP, it can do whatever it wants, including omission of required fields.

Please let me rephrase my suggestion.

If an implementation wants implemented the PEP it is required to provide a well defined set of attributes.

Of course I'm open for any suggestions regarding names, specification and content of the attribues.

Doing some bike-shedding: I'd like to not use "cpython" as the name of the python.org implementation. This term, I believe, was coined around JPython, somehow making the implementation language the primary means of distinction. However, there may be alternative implementations written in C (e.g. unladen swallow), or otherwise be "C based" (e.g. pypy).

So I propose that the python.org version is identified as "python".

CPython is a well established term that is widely used to distinguish between multiple implementations of Python as a language. On the one hand the python.org implementation was the first one. It founded the language and made it popular. On the other hand it may look arrogant from the perspective of the other implementors if we choose to use "python" as the identifier for the python.org implementation. In my opinion we should let Guido decide about the identifier before we have another bike-shedding war. ;-)

name (required): mixed case name of the implementation, for example "CPython", "IronPython", "Jython", "PyPy" Likewise; alternatively "python.org".

Interesting suggestion. Guido?

Christian

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