[Python-Dev] On breaking modules into packages Was: [issue10199] Move Demo/turtle under Lib/ (original) (raw)

R. David Murray rdmurray at bitdance.com
Wed Oct 27 16:34:52 CEST 2010

On Tue, 26 Oct 2010 23:37:10 -0400, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

On Oct 26, 2010, at 09:54 PM, Antoine Pitrou wrote: >I think it comes down to the preference of whoever works the most >actively on it. Michael is the most active contributor to unittest by >far, and I suppose he prefers it to be split into several submodules.

And that seems perfectly reasonable to me, especially if the alternative were that Michael was so frustrated with a massive single .py file that it discouraged him from working on it. If done well, a split can help improve the readability and discoverability of the code. I shudder at the madness that a single email.py file would cause.

To put your mind at ease, Barry, I'd not want to do that either :)

But by (IMO good) design Generator, FeedParser, and Message are all supposed to be independent (use only each other's public APIs). And Header can be (and is, I think) used without the other pieces of email, as is true for other of the helper modules (base64mime, quoprimime, etc). On the other hand, I have no clue why 'iterators.py' exists :)

The one that bugs me most, though, is MIME. Combining all the mime stuff into one file seems like it would be a big win (not that it's possible, now). What is the benefit of email.mime.text.MIMEText over email.mime.MIMEText, when each of the files in the mime package consists of a single subclass?

So, to clarify, like Raymond I'm not saying that packages are always bad. I'm just saying that packages are also not always good; and, further, that the number of lines of code in a file should, IMO, have nothing to do with the decision as to whether or not to create a package.

-- R. David Murray www.bitdance.com

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