Jython bugs or features?

[Dinu Gherman]

In article <3c7a70d2_4 at news.bluewin.ch>,
 "Samuele Pedroni" <pedronis at bluewin.ch> wrote:

> Yes they are bugs. Please report them.
> Since 2.1 release (two month ago) there have been approximately  10000
> download.
> 
> How are such bugs possible?
> 
> 1. the typical idiom for list(l) is l[:] (mildly irrelevant I know)
> 2. if you check the test suite for CPython 2.1 and Jython there is no test
> for list(l) behavior
> 3. the new reset method is also not tested by the test suite and is not
> reported in the NEWS file
> 
> (These are the result of some grepping, maybe I'm wrong but given the bugs
> probably I'm right).
> 
> We try to follow the big picture and the PEPs and check the NEWS file but
> for the rest the test suites
> are our best hope vs. delusional friend.
> If a feature is old, under-used, or through usage the bug does not show
> through, and un-tested things become tricky.
> 
> It is open source: Jython is as conforming as its community and CPython
> community ACTIVELY want it to be.


I'm pretty surprised! I knew the Python test suite is *very* far 
from complete, but list() is an *extremely* crucial function,
isn't it? 

My impression is that Jython claims to be an implementation of 
Python in Java. Everybody understands the existance of bugs, but 
if functions are missing I'm not sure there is sufficient quality
control, leave alone a useful test suite. My bold guess is that 
it should be very easy to check automatically for each module in 
the std.lib. at least if the same classes and methods do exist 
in CPython and JPython.

Honestly, I don't think it makes much sense to maintain two
code bases without some degree of automatic testing...

When seeing such bugs, my immediate reaction (like that of most
others) is to think that not many people can be using this serious-
ly.

Regards,

Dinu

PS: BTW, how about this one:

[localhost:~] dinu% jython
Jython 2.1 on java1.3.1 (JIT: null)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> os.chdir('..')
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
  File ".../Jython-2.1/Lib/javaos.py", line 56, in chdir
OSError: [Errno 0] chdir not supported in Java: ..