[Python-Dev] PEP 408 -- Standard library preview package (original) (raw)

Eli Bendersky eliben at gmail.com
Sat Jan 28 07:05:53 CET 2012

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 07:41, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:

Eli Bendersky writes:

 > My point is that if our users accept this, in the stable stdlib, I  > see no reason they won't accept the same happening between preview  > and a graduated module, when they (hopefully) understand the intention  > of preview. If it doesn't happen with sufficiently high frequency and annoyance factors to make attempting to use both the preview and graduated versions in the same code base unacceptable to most users, then preview is unnecessary, and the PEP should be rejected.

API differences such as changing one method to another (perhaps repeated over several methods) is unacceptable for stdlib modules. On the other hand, for a determined user importing from either preview or the graduated version it's only a matter of a few lines in a conditional import. IMHO this is much preferable to having the module either external or in the stdlib, because that imposes another external dependency.

But I think that the issue of keeping preview in a later release is just an "implementation detail" of the PEP and shouldn't be seen as its main decision point.

Eli

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