[Python-Dev] Preserving the definition order of class namespaces. (original) (raw)

Donald Stufft donald at stufft.io
Wed May 27 16:37:19 CEST 2015

On May 27, 2015 at 10:32:47 AM, Barry Warsaw (barry at python.org) wrote:

On May 27, 2015, at 06:34 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

>I'd actually like to pursue a more nuanced view of what's permitted in >maintenance releases, based on a combination of the language moratorium >PEP, and an approach inspired by PEP 466, requiring that every feature >added in a maintenance release be detectable through an attribute check on >a module (with corresponding support in dependency checking tools). PEP 466 and Python 2.7 are a special case. I wouldn't want to adopt such tactics in normal Python 3 releases. Imagine the nightmare of some poor library author who wants to make sure their package works with Python 3.6. They're faced with a source release of 3.6.5, but 3.6.3 in Ubuntu, 3.6.4 in Fedora, 3.6.2 in Debian, and users of all stripes of patch releases on Windows and OS X. Now they have to pepper their code with attribute tests just to support "Python 3.6". In fact, claiming support for Python 3.6 actually doesn't convey enough information to their users. Sure, we can limit this to new features, but even new features introduce risk. We've decided to accept this risk for Python 2.7 for good and important reasons, but we shouldn't do the same for ongoing normal releases. >The problem with simply speeding up the release cycle without constraining >the interim releases in some way is that it creates significant pain for >alternate implementations and for downstream redistributors (many of whom >are still dealing with the fallout of the Python 3 transition). I'm not convinced that relaxing the maintenance release constraints lessens the pain for anybody. Cheers, -Barry

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I think it increases the pain for everyone TBH.

I find the backport we did to Python 2.7 pretty crummy, but I think the only thing worse than backporting to a random patch release of 2.7 was not making it available to the 2.x line at all. I think that it would have been better to release it as a 2.8, however that was a hill I felt like dying on personally. Going forward I think we should either stick to the slower release schedule and just say it is what it is or release more often. The inbetween is killer.

Donald Stufft PGP: 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

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