[Python-Dev] Integrate BeautifulSoup into stdlib?

[David Cournapeau]

2009/3/24 Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com>:
> Steve Holden wrote:
>
>> Seems to me that while all this is fine for developers and Python users
>> it's completely unsatisfactory for people who just want to use Python
>> applications. For them it's much easier if each application comes with
>> all dependencies including the interpreter.
>>
>> This may seem wasteful, but it removes many of the version compatibility
>> issues that otherwise bog things down.
>>
> The upfront cost of bundling is lower but the maintenance cost is
> higher.  For instance, OS vendors have developed many ways of being
> notified of and dealing with security issues.  If there's a security
> issue with gtkmozdev and the python bindings to it have to be
> recompiled, OS vendors will be alerted to it and have the opportunity to
> release updates on zero day, the day that the security announcement goes
> out.

I don't think bundling should be compared to depending on the system
libraries, but as a lesser evil compared to requiring multiple,
system-wide installed libraries.

>
> 3) Over time, bundled libraries tend to become forked versions.  And
> worse, privately forked versions.  If three python apps all use slightly
> different older versions of libfoo-python and have backported fixes,
> added new features, etc it is a nightmare for a system administrator or
> packager to get them running with a single version from the system
> library or forward port them.  And because they're private forks the
> developers lose out on collaborating on security, bugfixes, etc because
> they are doing their work in isolation from the other forks.

This is a purely technical problem, and can be handled by good source
control systems, no ?

cheers,

David