[Python-Dev] Bugfix releases should not change APIs (original) (raw)

Benjamin Peterson benjamin at python.org
Sat May 29 03:23:37 CEST 2010

2010/5/28 Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com>:

Terry Reedy wrote:

http://bugs.python.org/issue8840 I was rather shocked to be told that the code-breaking and policy-violating change was intentional because being 'more consistent with other file-handling APIs out there' was somehow more important than consistency within version releases. It also seems to me that discussion of code-breaking API changes like this should involve more than one user and one developer.

This was discussed on the mailing list and this was produced: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-September/092247.html

What is the process for ensuring that such API changes do not creep into maintenance releases?

Generally developers are good about checking with the wider developer community about possibly incompatible changes. And given the link I posted above I don't consider this change to have "crept" in.

-- Regards, Benjamin

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list