[Python-Dev] update_wrapper should preserve staticmethod behavior

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> Calvin Spealman <ironfroggy <at> socialserve.com> writes:
>>
>> staticmethod doesn't wrap anything, it just creates a descriptor on
>> the class with a __get__ that returns the original, untouched
>> callable. Doesn't even care _what_ the thing you use it on is
>> (function, other callable, or something else entirely.)
>
> FWIW, I still disagree. Technically, it might not "wrap" anything (in the sense
> that it isn't defined as a function returning another function - which is a
> narrow definition of a wrapper by the way), but semantically it does. To the
> non-expert programmer, it is a decorator like any other one. The fact that it is
> implemented differently from other decorators is not an excuse for it to follow
> different rules...
>
> Unless, of course, there is a good *semantic* reason for staticmethod not to
> mirror the __module__ attribute.
>
> (by the way, does the same apply to classmethod as well?)

Remember (a) these are implemented in C, and (b) they were created in
Python 2.2, before we even had decorators (first introduced in 2.4).
I'm fine with making them more transparent and conformant to emerging
protocols, but they will always be a little different, due to being
implemented as objects rather than functional wrappers. The latter
approach *can* be used for decorator implementations to, it just is
done rarely.

I see this as something that can be done post beta 1. It has to be
done while carefully remaining backwards compatible though.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)