PyWart: "Python's import statement and the history of external dependencies"

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>   For a data stream format (like WAV and other mature formats), a module
>   working well today is likely to work just as well for the same purpose
>   in several years's time, long enough for today's Python to go through
>   its full life cycle of support.
>
>   PostgreSQL is a full-blown system that is itself under continual
>   development, and its APIs continually change to match. Whatever Python
>   API for PostgreSQL gets put into the standard library today is likely
>   to be obsolete long before today's version of Python gets close to
>   ending support. That makes it a poor candidate for inclusion in the
>   standard library.

That makes sense, as differences go. Though if wave and sndhdr were
currently PyPI-only and someone came to python-ideas/python-dev saying
"These modules ought to be in the standard library", I doubt they'd
get a huge amount of support. Of course, since they're currently in
the stdlib, there's absolutely no reason to *remove* them, but any
similar modules are likely to stay pip-gettable rather than
autoincluded. In contrast, something like Lib/email.py is providing
functionality that heaps of Python scripts want - sending or parsing
emails is pretty common, so it makes good sense to have that in the
stdlib.

ChrisA