[Python-Dev] [Idle-dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 11 Jul, 2010, at 1:05, Tal Einat wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I would like to propose removing IDLE from the standard library.
> 
> I have been using IDLE since 2002 and have been doing my best to help maintain and further develop IDLE since 2005.
> 
> In recent years IDLE has received negligible interest and attention from the Python community. During this time IDLE has slowly gone downhill. The documentation and tutorials grow increasingly out of date. Cross-platform support has degraded with the increasing popularity of OSX and 64-bit platforms. Bugs take months, and sometimes more than a year, to be solved. Features that have since become common-place, such as having a non-intrusive search box instead of a dialog, are obviously and painfully lacking, making IDLE feel clumsy and out-dated.

Are their patches that fixes these problems? If not, are their at least issues on python's tracker?

> 
> For these reasons, I think it would be fitting to remove IDLE from the standard library. IDLE is no longer recommended to beginners, IMO rightfully so, and this was the main reason for its inclusion in the standard library. Furthermore, if there is little or no interest in developing and maintaining IDLE, it should be removed to avoid having buggy and badly supported software in the standard library.

I'm -1 on that.  Several books, including fairly recent ones, use IDLE as the IDE for running examples.

Ronald

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