[Python-Dev] Backward incompatible API changes in the pydoc module (original) (raw)

Ron Adam rrr at ronadam.com
Tue Nov 9 02🔞00 CET 2010

On 11/08/2010 05:44 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

All,

I was about to commit the patch for issue 2001 (the improvements to the pydoc web server and the removal of the Tk GUI) when I realised that pydoc.serve() and pydoc.gui() are technically public standard library APIs (albeit undocumented ones). Currently the patch switches serve() to start the new server implementation and gui() to start the server and open a browser window for it. It occurred to me that, despite the "it's an application" feel to the pydoc web server APIs, it may be a better idea to leave the two existing functions alone (aside from adding DeprecationWarning), and using new private function names to start the new server and the web browser. Is following the standard deprecation procedure the better course here, or am I being overly paranoid?

What do you think about adding a new _pydoc3.py module along with a pydoc3.py loader module with a basic user api. The number 3, so that it match's python3.x.

We can then keep the old pydoc.py unchanged and be free to make a lot more changes to the _pydoc3.py file without having to be even a little paranoid.

Cheers, Ron

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