[Python-Dev] PEP 408 -- Standard library preview package (original) (raw)

Ethan Furman ethan at stoneleaf.us
Sat Jan 28 19:48:31 CET 2012

Michael Foord wrote:

On 28/01/2012 04:44, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

I think it's a bad idea to introduce a feature that's supposed to break (in the sense of "make a break", ie, change the normal pattern) with every release and then try to avoid breaking (in the sense of "causing an unexpected failure") code written by people who don't want to follow the discipline of keeping up with changing APIs. If they want that stability, they should wait for the stable release.

Modules should become unavailable from preview as soon as they have a stable home. I like not breaking people's code where possible.

preview is not about stability. It's about making code easily available for testing before the API freezes.

If nothing has changed once it graduates, how hard is it to change a few lines of code from

 from __preview__ import blahblahblah

to

 import blahblahblah

?

It seems to me that including a preview package in production software is a mistake, and not its intention.

Ethan

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