[Python-Dev] Thoughts on stdlib evolvement

[Martijn Faassen]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
[snip]
> in my experience, any external library that supports more than one
> Python version on more than one platform is likely to be more robust
> than code in the core.  add the multilevel volunteer approach de-
> described by Steven (with the right infrastructure, things like that
> just appear), and you get more competent manpower contributing
> to the standard distribution than you can get in any other way.

In this context PEP 2 might be useful to look at again:

http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0002.html

It separates between library integrators (into the Python standard 
library) and library maintainers, and tries to ensure maintenance 
happens on a continuing basis.

A multi-level setup to develop the Python standard library could take 
other forms, of course. I sometimes feel the Python-dev community is 
more focused on the development of the interpreter than of the library, 
and that this priority tends to be reversed outside the Python-dev 
community. So, it might be nice if the Python standard library 
development integrators and maintainers could be more separate from the 
Python core developers. A python-library-dev, say.

Then again, this shouldn't result in large changes in the standard 
library, as old things should continue to work for the forseeable 
future. So for larger reorganizations and refactorings, such development 
should likely take place entirely outside the scope of the core 
distribution, at least for the time being.

Finally, I haven't really seen much in the way of effort by developers 
to actually do such a large-scale cleanup. Nobody seems to have stepped 
up, taking the standard library, and made it undergo a radical 
refactoring (and just releasing it separately). That this hasn't 
happened seems to indicate the priority is not very high in the mind of 
people, so the problem might not be high either. :)

Regards,

Martijn