[Email-SIG] email package status in 3.X?

[R. David Murray]

On Fri, 07 May 2010 07:15:19 -0400, lutz at rmi.net wrote:
> --What's the current ETA on a new version of the email parser
> which handles byte strings?  The web suggests it might be 3.2, 
> 3.3, or even 3.4.  It seems to still be in early stages.

My best guess at this point (it's an informed guess, but still very much
a guess) is that email6 will be available in 3.3, and I am hoping there
will be a pypi package available for testing it under 3.1/3.2 some time
before the end of this year.

> --How backward compatible will the new email be?  I'm assuming
> it will handle bytes but be otherwise very similar, but 3.x set
> quite a precedent for changes, and changes break books.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news from your point of view, but there
are indeed likely to be a number of fairly significant changes.  The plan
is to provide a backward compatibility layer, but that probably doesn't
help you much since you'd presumably rather discuss the "official" API.

> Any updates on this would be appreciated; for better or worse, 
> email is a major dependency for one of the flagship Python books
> out there.  Since postponing the update probably isn't an option,
> I'm leaning towards decoding per a user-configurable default 
> (latin1 or utf8?) for now, but that's less than ideal.

Email is a major dependency for a number of things, and IMO is perhaps
the biggest thing blocking Python3 adoption that the Python development
community has any control over.  Unfortunately there is currently a
distinct lack of volunteer time to work on it.

Several of us are working on ways to support and speed up email6
development.  There is a GSoC student who will be doing some work,
with me as mentor, and I am hoping to get funding to be able to spend
a significant number of hours on the package on a contract-programming
basis as well.  There are structures the PSF needs to put in place before
I can do fundraising for that, however.  If you know anyone who might
want to just pay me for it straight out, let me know :)

As for what you do *now*...unfortunately I don't know of any answer that
works, otherwise we'd have implemented it.

--
R. David Murray                                      www.bitdance.com