Future standard GUI library

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 18 May 2013 10:03:02 -0400, Beinan Li wrote:

> Do you think tkinter is going to be the standard python built-in gui
> solution as long as python exists?

Probably.

> I couldn't help but wonder if wx or PySide receives better py2 and py3
> support, or anything else that prevent them from getting into the
> standard python distributions, whether or not this scene could start to
> shift ...

One of the major issues preventing projects being added to the standard 
library is the maintenance schedule. Python's schedule for new releases 
is quite conservative and slow. If, say, wxPython was added to the std 
lib, it would have to follow Python's schedule:

* most backwards incompatible changes would be forbidden;

* those that are allowed would require a minimum of two major releases 
(three years) before removing functionality;

* about four bug-fix releases (I think?) per year.

If a project is used to (say) weekly releases, dropping down to Python's 
schedule can be rather painful.

Once something has been added to the standard library, it more or less 
has to have a stable API, become conservative about changes, and care 
more about backwards-compatibility than new features. Stability and 
consistency become paramount. Many excellent, popular packages cannot 
live under those restrictions, and so will never be part of the standard 
library.

Tkinter is good in this regard, because it is a wrapper around Tk/Tcl, 
which is equally stable and conservative as Python. Possibly even more so.



-- 
Steven