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

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Wed Nov 17 14:24:39 CET 2010

2010/11/17 Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk>:

I don't think those reasons are compelling and the cost of splitting the Python development style guide into multiple documents are higher. (They run the risk of contradicting each other, if you want to find a particular rule you have multiple places to check, there is no single authoritative place to send people, people wanting to base documents off the Python style rules now have to refer to multiple places, etc.)

So -1 on splitting Python development style guide into multiple documents.

Indeed. We don't need to clarify things very often, but the idea of creating a new PEP every time we want to make something explicit that was historically implicit (or otherwise underspecified) is a silly idea. Allowing traceable revisions is what version control is for, and hence why the PEP archive is part of the SVN repository.

As far as notifiying current developers of any changes, they will generally be following python-dev anyway, or else will get pulled up on python-checkins if the policy change is significant (and this one really isn't all that significant - the only people it will affect are those deciding whether to document or deprecate implicitly public APIs and that almost never happens, since the vast majority of our APIs are explicitly public or private).

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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