[Python-Dev] PEP 384 accepted

[Tarek Ziadé]

2010/12/2 "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>:
>> I was told not to touch to Distutils code to avoid any regression
>> since it's patched to the bones in third party products. So we decided
>> to freeze distutils and add all new features in Distutils2, which is
>> at alpha stage now.  So this move seems contradictory to me.
>
> I think it was a bad decision to freeze distutils, and "we" certainly
> didn't make that (not any we that includes me, that is).

"We" is the people at the last language summit. Sorry if I used such a
vague word.

> This freeze made the situation worse.

Can you extend on this and explains why it makes it worse ?

If we (as you included) don't agree it's the best solution, I would
not want to be pushed back to square one at the next summit..

I happily reverted all my changes last year when asked, and started to
work on Distutils2. But I'll get out of steam if the direction changes
again, with you stating that it makes the situation worse.

>
> IIRC, it was really the incompatible changes that made people ask you to
> stop changing distutils.

Who is "people" ? Are you suggesting that we could have added all the
new features in Distutils in the stdlib ?

The decision was because we had a mix of:

- incompatible changes in private parts  -- and some packages where
patching distutils internals
- changes on public APIs behavior, whith a behavior that was not
clearly documented and suggest to interpretation
- some mistakes I made as well

But that's what you would expect for a project that needs to evolve a
lot. Thus the freezing.

So how would you make the situation better, if not by doing the work
in distutils2 ?

> Regards,
> Martin
>



-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org