[Python-Dev] python-dev Summary for 2004-12-16 through 2004-12-31 [draft]

[Brett C.]

Nice and short summary this time.  Plan to send this off Wednesday or Thursday 
so get corrections in before then.

------------------------------

=====================
Summary Announcements
=====================
You can still `register <http://www.python.org/pycon/2005/register.html>`__ for 
`PyCon`_.  The `schedule of talks`_ is now online.  Jim Hugunin is lined up to 
be the keynote speaker on the first day with Guido being the keynote on 
Thursday.  Once again PyCon looks like it is going to be great.

On a different note, as I am sure you are all aware I am still about a month 
behind in summaries.  School this quarter for me has just turned out hectic.  I 
think it is lack of motivation thanks to having finished my 14 doctoral 
applications just a little over a week ago (and no, that number is not a typo). 
  I am going to for the first time in my life come up with a very regimented 
study schedule that will hopefully allow me to fit in weekly Python time so as 
to allow me to catch up on summaries.

And this summary is not short because I wanted to finish it.  2.5 was released 
just before the time this summary covers so most stuff was on bug fixes 
discovered after the release.

.. _PyCon: http://www.pycon.org/
.. _schedule of talks: http://www.python.org/pycon/2005/schedule.html


=======
Summary
=======
-------------
PEP movements
-------------
I introduced a `proto-PEP 
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-January/050753.html>`__ to 
the list on how one can go about changing CPython's bytecode.  It will need 
rewriting once the AST branch is merged into HEAD on CVS.  Plus I need to get a 
PEP number assigned to me.  =)

Contributing threads:
   - ` proto-pep: How to change Python's bytecode <>`__

------------------------------------
Handling versioning within a package
------------------------------------
The suggestion of extending import syntax to support explicit version 
importation came up.  The idea was to have something along the lines of 
``import foo version 2, 4`` so that one can have packages that contain 
different versions of itself and to provide an easy way to specify which 
version was desired.

The idea didn't fly, though.  The main objection was that import-as support was 
all you really needed; ``import foo_2_4 as foo``.  And if you had a ton of 
references to a specific package and didn't want to burden yourself with 
explicit imports, one can always have a single place before codes starts 
executing doing ``import foo_2_4; sys.modules["foo"] = foo_2_4``.  And that 
itself can even be lower by creating a foo.py file that does the above for you.

You can also look at how wxPython handles it at 
http://wiki.wxpython.org/index.cgi/MultiVersionInstalls .

Contributing threads:
   - `Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] The versioning question... <>`__


===============
Skipped Threads
===============
- Problems compiling Python 2.3.3 on Solaris 10 with gcc 3.4.1
- 2.4 news reaches interesting places
      see `last summary`_ for coverage of this thread
- RE: [Python-checkins] python/dist/src/Modules posixmodule.c, 2.300.8.10, 
2.300.8.11
- mmap feature or bug?
- Re: [Python-checkins]	python/dist/src/Pythonmarshal.c, 1.79, 1.80
- Latex problem when trying to build documentation
- Patches: 1 for the price of 10.
- Python for Series 60 released
- Website documentation - link to descriptor information
- Build extensions for windows python 2.4 what are the compiler rules?
- Re: [Python-checkins] python/dist/src setup.py, 1.208, 1.209
- Zipfile needs?
     fake 32-bit unsigned int overflow with ``x = x & 0xFFFFFFFFL`` and signed 
ints with the additional ``if x & 0x80000000L: x -= 0x100000000L`` .
- Re: [Python-checkins] python/dist/src/Mac/OSX	fixapplepython23.py, 1.1, 1.2