[Python-Dev] Community buildbots and Python release quality metrics

Georg Brandl g.brandl at gmx.net
Thu Jun 26 22:39:00 CEST 2008


Terry Reedy schrieb:
> 
> glyph at divmod.com wrote:
> 
>> to what extent should Python actually be compatible between releases?
> 
> As I understand things from years of observation, the following are fair 
> game to changed in ways possibly backward-incompatible for specific 
> code: bugs, detailed float behavior (which may be system-specific 
> anyway), error messages, private interfaces, non-enforcement of 
> documented rules, and defined implementation-dependent behavior.  But 
> Guido has been somewhat conservative about this (least so for bug fixes, 
> I think) and sometimes put off changes even when the fault lies with 
> questionable usages.

Which is the source of many unresolved open issues in the tracker -- everyone
agrees that "it" is a bug and should be fixed, perhaps there's even a patch,
but people may be using it this way, so nothing is done forever.

(And these bugs usually are the kind of things we don't want to change in
3.0 either since they are subtle things.)

However, I don't have a solution here, so I won't complain about it anymore.

Georg



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