[Python-Dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Mon Jul 12 20:36:03 CEST 2010

On 12/07/2010 19:21, Ian Bicking wrote:

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Ron Adam <rrr at ronadam.com_ _<mailto:rrr at ronadam.com>> wrote:

There might be another alternative. Both idle and pydoc are applications (are there others?) that are in the standard library. As such, they or parts of them, are possibly importable to other projects. That restricts changes because a committer needs to consider the chances that a change may break something else. I suggest they be moved out of the lib directory, but still be included with python. (Possibly in the tools directory.) That removes some of the backward compatibility restrictions or at least makes it clear there isn't a need for backward compatibility.

I also like this idea. This means Python comes with an IDE "out of he box" but without the overhead of a management and release process that is built for something very different than a GUI program (the standard library). This would mean that IDLE would be in site-packages, could easily be upgraded using normal tools, and maybe most importantly it could have its own community tools and development process that is more casual (and can more easily integrate new contributors) and higher velocity of changes and releases. Python releases would then ship the most recent stable release of IDLE. IDLE itself is probably stable enough that being able to "upgrade in place" is not a high priority. That could change based on this thread of course.

I would really support this approach with "pip" once distutils2 is complete and integrated into the standard library. I would really like Python to come with a capable package manager "out of the box" but understand your reluctance to tie pip to the Python release schedule. Having pip installed into site-packages by default, so that it can be upgraded in place, would be win-win as far as I can tell. Slight thread hijacking I realise... :-)

All the best,

Michael

-- Ian Bicking | http://blog.ianbicking.org

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