[Python-Dev] python-dev Summary for 2004-07-16 through 2004-07-31
[draft]
Brett Cannon
bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Aug 5 09:05:16 CEST 2004
OK, so I procrastinated from doing more work on my thesis and did the
next summary. Plan to send this out some time over the weekend.
-------------------------------
=====================
Summary Announcements
=====================
Python 2.4a2 should be coming out any day now, so keep an eye out for it
and test the heck out of it.
========
Summary
========
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Makin' bdist_wininst purty and nicer for them non-English speaking folks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Heller asked if some better images for Distutil's bdist_wininst
could be used. Some existing images were discussed, but no specific
resolution was mentioned in the thread.
Walter Dörwald brought up the point that if this was all being worked on
he wouldn't mind having Unicode support for things such as author name
and such. Thomas and Walter worked on it and that has gone in.
Contributing threads:
- `bdist_wininst
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046268.html>`__
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assigning to None a no-no, but still okay for booleans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assigning to None is now a SyntaxError instead of a SyntaxWarning.
Assignment to True and False, though, is still allowed and probably will
not be restricted until Python 3.0 (which will probably have to wait
until, if Guido's OSCON slides are to be believed, until he retires).
The idea of restricting assignment, though, was brought up by Raymond
Hettinger. Michael Hudson, though, pointed out it would be difficult
and possibly require a special opcode to handle it.
Contributing threads:
- `Re: [Python-checkins] python/dist/src/Python compile.c,
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046271.html>`__
- `None as constant. Still SyntaxWarning
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046323.html>`__
-----------------------------------------------------------------
'as' does not get to be treated with kiddie gloves
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Eby asked if 'as' was going to become a keyword. Guido said not
now, but in Python 3.0 it will be.
Contributing threads:
- `"as" to be a keyword?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046304.html>`__
-------------------------------------------------------------
Hopefully you didn't love FCNTL like a child...
--------------------------------------------------------------
... since if you did that kid was a lazy punk that did nothing but cause
trouble for Windows users. That's why it got kicked out of the house to
never come back.
Contributing threads:
- `Kill FCNTL.py
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046322.html>`__
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How to get Python to compile with Microsoft's free compiler that should
just come with the OS standard
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Download the free .NET compiler
2. Download the Windows SDK (at
http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/ with only IE)
3. Download Garth's tools to generate a Makefile from the .sln files (at
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-February/042595.html )
4. Compile
5. Realize you should be using an OS that doesn't make you go through
this many hoops just to have a compiler for your platform
Contributing threads:
- `Non-Visual Studio builds on Windows XP?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046324.html>`__
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Peters, whitespace Czar, will break your legs if you mess up the
pristine whitespace in CVS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Peters ran Tools/Scripts/reindent.py over the entire CVS tree and
fixed it up. This means you had better not mess up and check in using
anything but 4-space indents with no tabs!
Contributing threads:
- `Fun with whitespace
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046331.html>`__
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thread safety == won't blow up in your face
-----------------------------------------------------------
Paul Moore pointed out that the documentation for deques in the
collections module stated they were thread-safe. It was clarified that
the statement meant that internal state would not be corrupted if
multiple threads accessed the same object; no guarantee that it isn't
accessed in some order or anything. Basically the idea of thread-safety
for C code is that it won't lead to the interpreter exploding, nothing
more. And you don't even get that guarantee with Python code.
Contributing threads:
- `Thread safety of deques
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046343.html>`__
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LC_NUMERIC PEP gets a pristine, new PEP number
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even though the code had already been put into the core, the PEP about
LC_NUMERIC and being locale-independent never got a PEP number. Well,
now it has one: `PEP 331`_.
.. _PEP 331: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0331.html
Contributing threads:
- `PEP 331: Locale-Independent Float/String Conversions
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046358.html>`__
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Edward Loper becomes one of us rowdy developers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
And he has already made his initial contribution by helping to rework
doctest.
Contributing threads:
- `Would like to add Edward Loper as a Python developer
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046395.html>`__
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Any misbehaving modules during initialization from import now get the boot
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Fulton wanted a better way to detect when an import failed thanks to
another module being directly imported (e.g., module A imports B which
raised TypeError from some initialization code from importing; importing
would leave A and B in a shoddy state in sys.modules along with raising
TypeError in the import from A instead of raising ImportError). While
the latter still occurs, modules are not left in sys.modules in a broken
state from exceptions being raised during initialization thanks to Guido
and Tim Peters.
There was a discussion on circular imports and how to handle those for
proper rollback. Some suggestions were taking a snapshot of sys.modules
and then restoring with that if something bad happens to putting in
placeholder modules in sys.modules so as to not try to extra imports on
modules in the process and to help track state. But this all gets
sticky from side-effects that modules can do outside of themselves
before they finish importing everyone else. If, for instance, module A,
as a side-effect of importation, injected a custom version of len into
module B. Now, if module A did this before doing all of its imports it
could pull of the len injection but still fail from a bad import. That
is not good. Basically the best solution is to not do that; there is a
reason you should do all of your global imports as the first thing in a
module.
Contributing threads:
- `Fix import errors to have data
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046424.html>`__
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stuff about Unicode, state, and how to handle when a stream terminated
early; all CJK to me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Walter Dörwald noticed that codecs.StreamReader.read() would read a few
more bytes when it discovered an error. That's bad since there might
not be more bytes and continuing once an error has been found is just
not right. So he wanted to fix that problem.
Unfortunately he and MA Lemburg started to talk and I just couldn't
follow everything about stateful and stateless decoders/encoders and the
issues; I'm American so Unicode just doesn't fit in my brain well. So
if you want to know what conclusions they reached you are going to read
the thread on your own.
Contributing threads:
- `Decoding incomplete unicode
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046450.html>`__
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Use the docs to know what the public API is, people
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fernando Perez got bit by having something removed from the 'keyword'
module that was not part of the documented API. Turns out that running
'help' on the module listed the function in question and so he just went
ahead an used it. That's not the right way to go about finding the
public API of stdlib code.
Always follow the documentation. If it is not listed there don't expect
it to be there in the next version. While we try not to yank stuff out
needlessly and will tweak things to be nice on occasion, we make no
guarantees on stuff not listed in the API.
The next best thing is what is listed in __all__ for a module. Since
that is explicitly listed that usually can be considered part of the API.
And lastly, anything starting with an underscore is off limits in terms
of promises of keeping it around.
Luckily Skip Montanaro applied a patch for pydoc to have it only list
stuff in modules as specified by __all__, so it's a little safer out
there. But the actual documentation is still king.
Contributing threads:
- `Rationale behind removing kwdict from keyword.py?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046465.html>`__
-------------------------------------------------------
Linking against static builds on Windows
-------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Heller pointed out that one couldn't dynamically link against a
statically built Python interpreter DLL. He and Martin v. Löwis
discussed various ways to try to get this to work, but it doesn't appear
they came up with one.
Contributing threads:
- `Static builds on Windows
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046499.html>`__
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