[Python-Dev] BDFL delegation for PEP 426 + distutils freeze (original) (raw)

Chris Jerdonek chris.jerdonek at gmail.com
Wed Feb 6 11:03:27 CET 2013

On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Chris Jerdonek <chris.jerdonek at gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Éric Araujo <merwok at netwok.org> wrote:

Le 03/02/2013 07:48, Antoine Pitrou a écrit :

I vote for removing the "distutils is frozen" principle. I’ve also been thinking about that. There have been two exceptions to the freeze, for ABI flags in extension module names and for pycache directories. When the stable ABI was added and MvL wanted to change distutils (I don’t know to do what exactly), Tarek stood firm on the freeze and asked for any improvement to go into distutils2, and after MvL said that he would not contibute to an outside project, we merged d2 into the stdlib. Namespace packages did not impact distutils either. Now that we’ve removed packaging from the stdlib, we have two Python features that are not supported in the standard packaging system, and I agree that it is a bad thing for our users.

I’d like to propose a reformulation of the freeze: This could be common knowledge, but is the current formulation of the freeze spelled out somewhere?

I asked this earlier, but didn't see a response. Is the freeze stated somewhere like in a PEP? If not, can someone state it precisely (e.g. what's allowed to change and what's not)?

Thanks, --Chris

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