[Python-Dev] Integrate BeautifulSoup into stdlib?

[Chris Withers]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Based on the sad example of BerkeleyDB, which was initially welcomed
> into the stdlib but more recently booted out for reasons having to do
> with the release cycle of the external dependency and other issues
> typical for large external dependencies, I think we should be very
> careful with including it in the standard library.


Yes. My experience of these kinds of libraries (bdb, lxml, etc) is that 
having them in the Python stdlib is a "bad thing".

Why? Because python (quite rightly, as I'm being convinced!) has a very 
conservative policy of changes is 3rd point releases. This, however, 
means you end up getting 'stuck" with a release of something like lxml 
that you can't upgrade to get new features because you, say, use a 
debian-packages python which only upgrades when Debian next decide to do 
  release...

In light of this, what I'd love to see (but sadly can't really help 
with, and am not optimistic about happening) is for:

- python to grow a decent, cross platform, package management system

- the standard library to actually shrink to a point where only 
libraries that are not released elsewhere are included

I'd be interested to know how many users of python also felt this way ;-)

Chris