[Python-Dev] 3.x as the official release (original) (raw)

P.J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Wed Sep 15 21🔞14 CEST 2010

At 11:11 AM 9/15/2010 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:

Given that wsgiref is in the stdlib, I think we should hold up the 3.2 release (and even the first beta) until this is resolved, unless we can convince ourselves that it's okay to delete wsgiref from the stdlib (which sounds unlikely but may not be any more incompatible than making it work properly :-).

FWIW, I'd be fine with that option.

I want to emphasize that I am not a stakeholder so my preference for bytes or Unicode shouldn't matter; that said, given WSGI's traditional emphasis on using the lowest-level, vanilla standard datatypes (e.g. you can't even subclass dict let alone provide another kind of mapping -- it has to be a real dict) it makes sense to me that the values should be bytes, os.environ notwithstanding. The keys probably could be Unicode (HTTP headers are required to use only 7-bit ASCII characters anyways right?). But I'd be happy to be shown the error of my ways (or given a link showing prior discussion of the matter -- preferably with a conclusion :-).

There isn't a conclusion yet, but the proposals under discussion are summarized here:

http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Python_3#Proposals

The primary points of consensus are bytes for wsgi.input, and native strings (i.e. Unicode on Python 3) for environment keys.

If I were to offer a suggestion to a PEP author or dictator wanting to get something out ASAP, it would probably be to create a compromise between the "flat" model (my personal favorite) and the mod_wsgi model, as an addendum to PEP 333. Specifically:

This would probably allow us to get by with the least changes to existing code, the stdlib, the standard itself, and wsgiref. (wsgiref itself would still need a thorough code review, especially wsgiref.validate, but it'd be unlikely to change much.)

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