[Python-Dev] typeshed for 3rd party packages

[Skip Montanaro]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> For Requests, it looks like it may be better not to have stubs at all.


Can you expand on this? Why would Requests be any different than any other
module/package?

As for versioning, I think stub files would absolutely have to declare the
appropriate version(s) to which they apply (probably via embedded
directives), so type checkers can ignore them when necessary. That also
means that type checkers must be able to figure out the version of the
package used by the application being analyzed.

Not sure I'm being too clear, so I will provide an example. I have app
"myapp" which imports module "yourmod" v 1.2.7. The yourmod author hasn't
yet provided type annotations, so someone else contributed a stub to the
typeshed. Time passes and a new version of "yourmod" comes out, v 2.0.0.
(Semantic versioning tells us the API has changed in an incompatible way
because of the major version bump.) I decide I need some of its new
features and update "myapp". There is no new stub file in the typeshed yet.
When I run my fancy type checker (someone suggested I will shortly have 50
to choose from!), it needs to recognize that the stub no longer matches the
version of "yourmod" I am using, and must ignore it.

Does that suggest the typeshed needs some sort of structure which allows
all versions of stubs for the same package to be gathered together?

My apologies if I'm following along way behind the curve.

Skip
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