[Python-Dev] Restricted API versioning (original) (raw)

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Sun Jun 24 10🔞19 CEST 2012

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

This strikes me as in opposition to the Python-level policy of duck typing. Would it be more appropriate to, instead of asking if it's Python 3.3.0, ask if it's a Python that supports PYFEATUREFOOBAR? Or would that result in an unnecessary proliferation of flag macros?

It would, hence I'm -1. I believe it is the motivation for the gcc assertion preprocessor feature, which never caught on. Right, if someone wants to check for a specific feature rather than just figuring out once the minimum version of the stable ABI that they need, then they can write an autotools macro (or equivalent in other build systems).

Fair enough. I assume these sorts of things are only ever going to be added once, and not backported to old versions, so a single version number is guaranteed to suffice (it's not like "available in 4.5.6 and 4.6.2 and 4.7.4"). Go with the easy option!

ChrisA

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