[XML-SIG] Python package name

[M.-A. Lemburg]

uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, Martin v. Loewis wrote:
> 
> > At one point Guido clarified that xml and xmlcore could migrate to xmlplus
> > and xml over time, just as long as we give people time to change and an
> > upgrade path.
> >
> > I understood this as:
> >
> > pyxml gets an xmlplus alias now
> > pyxml gives up xml in six months
> > xmlcore gets an xml alias then
> > xmlcore name is deprecated sometime later
> >
> > It's kind of ugly but I could live with it.
> >
> > If the xmlplus hack works (really works, without subtle side effects) then
> > I would prefer that.
> 
> I'm really sorry to be so far AWOL on such an important topic, but we've been
> running about like mad to get the next 4Suite out the door so we _can_ pay
> attention to Python 1.6 and 2.0.
> 
> But a quick pip for today:  I think the above approach to package
> naming/renaming is the best of all available hacks.

Wouldn't the whole situation be much easier to handle if
lib/python2/site-packages was searched *before* lib/python2 ?

That way, newly installed packages could effectively completely
override stdlib packages.

We will have a similar problem with Unicode and the stdlib
during the Python 2.0 cycle: people will want to use Unicode
together with the stdlib, yet many modules in the stdlib
don't support Unicode. To remedy this, users will have to
patch the stdlib modules and put them somewhere so that they
can override the original 2.0 ones.

BTW, with distutils coming on strong I don't really see a
need for any hacks: instead distutils should be given some
smart logic to do the right thing, ie. it should support
installing subpackages of a package. If that's not desired,
then I'd opt for overriding the whole package (without any
hacks to import the overridden one).

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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