[Python-Dev] Breaking undocumented API (original) (raw)

Alexander Belopolsky alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com
Thu Nov 11 19:40:36 CET 2010

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 7:01 AM, Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote: ..

I don't understand why everyone seem to have accepted Michael's premise that "we don't have a clearly stated policy for what defines the public API of standard library modules."  We do have such a policy and it is well known (while the location in the reference manual may not be): Ha. 14 paragraphs into the grammar reference on the import statement is perhaps not where developers would go to look for Python standard library development policy..

Very true. To make it slightly more visible, any objections to the following patch? (It adds "public names (in module globals)" linking to that 14-th paragraph in the index.)

Index: Doc/reference/simple_stmts.rst

--- Doc/reference/simple_stmts.rst (revision 86409) +++ Doc/reference/simple_stmts.rst (working copy) @@ -794,6 +794,7 @@ namespace of the :keyword:import statement..

.. index:: single: all (optional module attribute) +.. index:: public names (in module globals)

The public names defined by a module are determined by checking the module's namespace for a variable named __all__; if defined, it must be a sequence of

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