[Python-Dev] Thoughts on stdlib evolvement

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 03:17 PM 6/6/2005 -0700, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>Personally I'd like to see the standard library get smaller rather
>than larger.  There's a whole lot of bit rot in there, and since
>sys.path prefers the standard library over anything else it's a
>really huge pain to integrate patches on a faster release schedule
>than Python's while remaining sane at the same time.

You know, before you said that, it hadn't occurred to me that the Python 
standard library is subject to the same economic forces that cause 
mega-packages like Twisted, SciPy, Zope, etc. to develop.  Specifically, 
the cost incurred by relying on an externally-distributed dependency causes 
anyone with non-trivial needs to create "batteries included" libraries.

One of my goals for Python Eggs and EasyInstall was to lower this 
dependency-cost barrier by reducing the "dependency cost" to zero at the 
point of installation, by making it as easy to install ten packages as 
one.  (Another was to reduce the dependency cost for the developer, who 
need only add package metadata for the dependency to be fulfilled at 
installation time.)

Now that you've pointed out the parallel between the stdlib and the other 
modules, I wonder if Python 3.0 might be able to take a more minimalist 
approach to the standard library, if it included the equivalents of 
easy_install and pkg_resources.