[Python-Dev] Python 3.0.1

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:58 PM, Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> wrote:
> A couple additional thoughts FWIW:
>
> * whichdb() selects from multiple file formats, so 3.0.1 would still
>  be able to read 3.0.0 files.   It is the 2.x shelves that won't be
>  readable at all under any scenario.
>
> * If you're thinking that shelves have very few users and that
>  3.0.0 has had few adopters, doesn't that mitigate the effects
>  of making a better format available in 3.0.1?  Wouldn't this
>  be the time to do it?
>
> * The file format itself is not new or unreadable by 3.0.0.
>  It is just a plain sqlite3 file.  Was is new is the ability
>  of shelve's to call sqlite.  To me, that is something a little
>  different than changing a pickle protocol or somesuch.

Sorry, not convinced. This is a change of a different scale than
removing stuff that should've been removed. I understand you'd like to
see your baby released. But I think it's better to have it tried and
tested by others *outside* the core distro first. dbm is not broken in
3.0, just slow. Well so be it, io.py is too and that's a lot more
serious. I also note that on some systems at least ndbm and/or gdbm
are supported.

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