Thoughts on some stdlib modules

[Steve Holden]

Ron_Adam wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 05:15:23 -0400, vegetax <vegeta.z at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Are those issues being considered right now? i cant find any PEP addressing
>>the issue especifically, at least cooking it for python 3000.
>>
>>specific topics could be:
>>
>>grouping related modules.
>>removing useless legacy modules.
>>refactoring duplicated functionality.
>>removing/redesigning poorly written modules.
>>adding a module versioning system.
> 
> 
> I've been thinking that the lib directory could be better named and
> rearranged a bit.  I sometimes mistakenly open the libs directory
> instead of lib because of the name similarity.
> 
> An alternative might be to use the name "packs" or "packages" in place
> of "lib", which would emphasize the use of packages as the primary
> method of extending python. The standard library could then be a
> package called "stdlib" within this directory. Third party packages
> would then be along side "stdlib" and not within a directory that is
> within the standard library.
> 
> It would be mostly a cosmetic change, but I believe it would be worth
> doing if it could be done without breaking programs that may have hard
> coded path references to the library.  :-/
> 
> Ron
> 
Ron:

You do a lot of thinking, don't you? :-)

This is a *very large* change, not a cosmetic one, requiring changes to 
many installation routines (including, probably, distutils) and causing 
problems for software that attempts to operate with multiple versions of 
Python - and those projects have problems enough as it is despite 
Python's quite fine record of careful development.

This seems a rather high price to pay just to avoid having you 
mistakenly avoid opening "libs" instead of "lib" - a distinction that is 
only meaningful on Windows platforms anyway, I believe.

You are correct in suggesting that the library could be better organized 
than it is, but I felt we would be better off deferring such change 
until the emergence of Python 3.0, which is allowed to break backwards 
compatibility. So, start working on your scheme now - PEP 3000 needs 
contributions. My own current favorite idea is to have the current 
standard library become the "stdlib" package, but I'm sure a lot of 
people would find that suggestion at least as half-baked as yours.

{If an idea is more-half-baked than something exactly half-baked is it 
0.4-baked or 0.6-baked? Does "more half-baked" actually mean "less baked"?)

regards
  Steve
-- 
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