[Python-Dev] uuid backward compatibility (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Mon Jun 19 22:49:48 CEST 2006

Ka-Ping Yee wrote:

This sentiment is puzzling to me. It seems you assume that we can trust future developers to change the code but we can't trust them to update the documentation.

That's precisely my expectation. Suppose Python 3.0 unifies int and long, and deprecates the L suffix. Then,

if not 0 <= time_low < 1<<32L:

will change to

if not 0 <= time_low < 1<<32:

While this will work fine in Python 2.4 and onwards, it will break 2.3. Whoever is making the change won't even think of the necessity of a documentation change - after all, this is supposed to be a style change, only. People do make whole-sale style changes to the entire library from time to time.

So we can't have documentation even if it's factually true just because someone might forget to update it?

Sure, we can, and if you want that to, we should (you are the author, so your view is quite important), and I'll shut up. I just wanted to caution about a risk here.

If you see a better way to word the comment to reduce the possibility of misunderstanding, that's cool with me. I'd just like people who get their hands on the module to know that they can use it with 2.3.

I personally didn't find it misleading at all, and see no need to change it for that reason. I see a potential risk in it wrt. future changes, but perhaps I'm paranoid.

Regards, Martin

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