[Python-Dev] Unicode patches checked in

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Christian Tismer wrote:
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> >
> > Christian Tismer wrote:
> ...
> > > Absolutely great stuff! But this will most probably change
> > > a number of times again, and I think it is a bad idea when
> > > I include it into my Stackless distribution.
> >
> > Why not ? All you have to do is rebuild the distribution
> > every time you push a new version -- just like I did
> > for the Unicode version before the CVS checkin was done.
> 
> But how can I then publish my source code, when I always
> pull Unicode into it. I don't like to be exposed to
> side effects like 700kb code bloat, just by chance, since it
> is in the dist right now (and will vanish again).

All you have to do is build the unicodedata module shared
and not statically bound into python.dll. This one module
causes most of the code bloat...
 
> I don't say there must be #ifdefs all and everywhere, but
> can I build without *using* Unicode? I don't want to
> introduce something new to my users what they didn't ask for.
> And I don't want to take care about their installations.
> Finally I will for sure not replace a 500k DLL by a 1.2M
> monster, so this is definately not what I want at the moment.
> 
> How do I build a dist that doesn't need to change a lot of
> stuff in the user's installation?

I don't think that the Unicode stuff will disable
the running environment... (haven't tried this though).
The unicodedata module is not used by the interpreter
and the rest is imported on-the-fly, not during init
time, so at least in theory, not using Unicode will
result in Python not looking for e.g. the encodings
package.

> Note that Stackless Python is a drop-in replacement,
> not a Python distribution. Or should it be?

Probably... I think it's simply easier to install
and probably also easier to maintain because it doesn't
cause dependencies on other "default" installations.
The user will then explicitly know that she is installing
something a little different from the default distribution...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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