[Python-Dev] folding cElementTree behind ElementTree in 3.3

[Stefan Behnel]

Fred Drake, 08.02.2012 05:41:
> On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Eli Bendersky wrote:
>> Besides, in http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-December/114812.html
>> Stefan Behnel said "[...] Today, ET is *only* being maintained in the
>> stdlib by Florent Xicluna [...]". Is this not true?
> 
> I don't know.  I took this to be an observation rather than a declaration
> of intent by the package owner (Fredrik Lundh).

This observation resulted from the fact that Fredrik hasn't updated the
code in his public ElementTree repository(ies) since 2009, i.e. way before
the release of Python 2.7 and 3.2 that integrated these changes.

https://bitbucket.org/effbot/et-2009-provolone/overview

The integration of ElementTree 1.3 into the standard library was almost
exclusively done by Florent, with some supporting comments by Fredrik. Note
that ElementTree 1.3 has not even been officially released yet, so the only
"final" public release of it is in the standard library. Since then,
Florent has been actively working on bug tickets, most of which have not
received any reaction on the side of Fredrik.

That makes me consider it the reality that "today, ET is only being
maintained in the stdlib".


>> P.S. Would declaring that xml.etree is now independently maintained by
>> pydev be a bad thing? Why?
> 
> So long as Fredrik owns the package, I think forking it for the standard
> library would be a bad thing, though not for technical reasons.  Fredrik
> provided his libraries for the standard library in good faith, and we still
> list him as the external maintainer.  Until *that* changes, forking would
> be inappropriate.  I'd much rather see a discussion with Fredrik about the
> future maintenance plan for ElementTree and cElementTree.

I didn't get a response from him to my e-mails since early 2010. Maybe
others have more luck if they try, but I don't have the impression that
waiting another two years gets us anywhere interesting.

Given that it was two months ago that I started the "Fixing the XML
batteries" thread (and years since I brought up the topic for the first
time), it seems to be hard enough already to get anyone on python-dev
actually do something for Python's XML support, instead of just actively
discouraging those who invest time and work into it.

Stefan