We need PIGs :)

[Martin Marcher]

Hello,

having worked quite a bit with python in the last months (some Java
before, and some C++ before that) I was very impressed by an idea the
Java people had.

Explanation: the JSRs define how to implement certain services and or
features in Java so that they can be reused. I haven't found such a
thing for python yet.

Say I have the problem of authentication. Now I can implement
authentication against a text file with a "key : value" format.

However someone may find it more suitable to implement a
authentication backend for exactly this app that can use postgres.

Who else can use the authentication for my program created by a third
party in his or her own app/package/module? To my knowledge noone as
there's nothing you could at least theoretically keep to.

My idea was to define "Python Implementation Guidelines" (PIGs) that
specify a problem formalize it enough so that implementations are
interchangeable (in this example create a module that has an
"authenticate(username, password)" method so that one could easily
take that module for any given app and then authenticate against
postgres, and also against my plaintext file (which was the original -
quite useless - implementation).

Does that sound like a good idea or would that be over formalization?

Personally I think that would be great as I could search the PIGs at
(hopefully) python.org find out the number and search at koders.com or
code.google.com for python code that has "PIG: XXX" in the metadata
docstring or wherever - maybe even a __pig__ = XXX variable.

any input is welcome (also point me to the place where that can be
found if it already exists)
martin