[Python-Dev] Sumo (original) (raw)

geremy condra debatem1 at gmail.com
Wed May 26 18:22:04 CEST 2010

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 5:46 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

Le mercredi 26 mai 2010 à 13:19 +0100, Paul Moore a écrit :

I'm not sure how a "Sumo" approach would work in practical terms, and this thread isn't really the place to discuss, but there's a couple of points I think are worth making: * For a "Sumo" distribution to make sense, some relatively substantial chunk of the standard library would need to be moved out to reside in the sumo distribution. Otherwise it's not really a "sumo", just a couple of modules that "nearly made it into the stdlib", at least for the near-to-medium term. This is not what I'm suggesting at all. The stdlib wouldn't shrink (well, we could dump outdated modules but that's a separate decision). A hypothetical "Sumo" distribution would be made of those more or less useful modules that many people (application or framework developers; for example, take a look at the dozens of direct and indirect dependencies TurboGears pulls in) need and install. The whole point is that it would not be supported by python-dev itself but by a separate group of people (such as you :-)). And it would have its own rules (surely more relaxed) over inclusion or deprecation delays, the ability to make compatibility-breaking changes, release timings, multiple obvious ways to do the same thing, etc. And it means it could really bundle a lot of third-party stuff: small helpers (things like the decorator module), event loops, template engines, network address abstractions, argument parsers, ORMs, UI toolkits, etc. (a side-effect would be that it could, if it works well, behave as a good intermediate stress test - a purgatory, if you want - for modules before they integrate the stdlib) If you want an existing analogy, you could look at EasyPHP. Or think of Python as the Gnome or KDE project (consistent and aiming at providing the most important everyday tools, but quite focused), and "Sumo" as an entire distribution of disparate Linux GUI apps. Regards Antoine.

I'd also point out that creating a sumo distribution would focus attention on the need to port those libraries which were a part of it to python3, which would help to weaken the argument that there aren't any packages written for it.

Geremy Condra

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