[Doc-SIG] Re: Updates to Docutils

[David Goodger]

[David Goodger]
> Fred Drake pointed out that Python 2.1 didn't have the "compiler"
> package as part of the standard library (it was a separate
> install), and that's crucial to the Python Source Reader work
> that's ongoing.  Therefore I've decided to upgrade the minimum
> Python requirement to 2.2 (2.2.2 recommended).  Everything except
> the test suite and the docutils/readers/python code still works
> with Python 2.1 though.

Thanks Fred, Tony, and Benja, for your input.  I agree that Jython
currently at 2.1 presents a strong case for maintaining 2.1
compatibility.  The compiler package was in the Tools/ directory of
the Python source distribution, complete with a Distutils setup.py for
installation.

I wonder, does the compiler package work with Jython at all?  Benja?

Another issue is that I've been using tokenize.py's generate_tokens()
call in docutils/readers/python/moduleparser.py, which uses
generators, which requires Python 2.2.  Although this has been more of
an experiment than a requirement, it was a pleasant experiment and it
would be painful and a waste to reimplement it without iterators and
generators.

I put back the pre-generators difflib.py (used by the test suite) and
added footnotes to the README and the home page saying:

   Python 2.1 may be used providing the compiler package is
   installed.  The compiler package can be found in the Tools/
   directory of Python's source distribution.

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]
> I've not dug into the alltests.py script yet; perhaps there's a way
> to do something similar to the "skipped tests" idea that we use with
> the Python test suite.  That's probably more a matter of mechanics
> than anything.  I won't have time to look into that for at least a
> few days; if anyone beats me to it I won't complain.  ;-)

Done.  The tests pass but report "test skipped" to stderr, under
Python 2.1.

-- 
David Goodger  <goodger@python.org>  Open-source projects:
  - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
    (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html)
  - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/