[Python-Dev] Trickery with moving urllib (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Sun May 11 05:38:00 CEST 2008

There is going to be an issue with the current proposal for keeping around urllib. Since the package is to be named the same thing as the module, to handle the new name that means urllib.init will need to gain the Py3K warning for the new name. But that doesn't quite work as the package's module will be imported automatically any time the module within the package is used.

I see three solutions for dealing with this.

  1. Have stubs for the entire urllib API in urllib.init that raise a DeprecationWarning either specifying the new name or saying the function/class is deprecated.

  2. Rename urllib to urllib.fetch or urllib.old_request to get people to move over to urllib.request (aka urllib2) at some point.

  3. Ditch urllib completely and have people move to urllib.request directly from 2.6 going into 3.0.

I was a fan of 3 in the stdlib SIG, but MAL argued well for 2 since so much code uses urllib (although I have always wondered how many really use urllib and how many could easily just move over to urllib2). The current solution of keeping around urllib's classes was a compromise, but I had not thought out the transition yet (and Jeremy Hylton will be running into this as he has volunteered to handle this).

What do people think we should do?

-Brett

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list