[python-committers] [Python-Dev] Proposed Python 3.0 schedule

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> More specifically, I think 2to3 is shaping up well.  pywin32 is taking the
> approach of "port where possible, but keep in py2x syntax and convert at
> 'setup.py' time" and this is working out fairly well

I can't say how glad I am that you say that. It supports lib2to3 being a
proper library, despite the problems that this may cause in itself.

> * Better support for 2to3 in distutils (specifically, the support in
> build_py is stale, plus 'build_scripts' and 'install_data' should convert
> .py files to py3k syntax.)

Please do create a bug report for that. It sounds like it's easy to fix.

> An 'example' project that uses py2k syntax and
> "just works" on py3k using this strategy might be useful here.

Perhaps pywin32 :-?

I don't think a demo project would do much good, as it doesn't exercise
all the issues that may occur.

> * A standard 'helper script' that allows people to use py3k to execute a
> py2x syntax script by auto-converting the code.  I've a 10ish-line script
> that uses lib2to3 plus exec() to achieve that result, but a helper in 2to3
> for this would be nice.  For a concrete use-case, we want to keep our
> distutils script in py2x syntax, but execute it via py3k.  Its very possible
> this already exists and I've just missed it...

For the case of setup.py, I was hoping that it could be written in
compatible syntax even without needing conversion. That worked fine for
my Django port. Is that not the case for pywin32?

This specific issue might be out of scope for 3.x, IMO.

> Either way, I'm fairly confident a pywin32 build for py3k will be available
> in the next month or 2 (but as a result, I'm not really in a position to
> help with the above for that period...)

But please do file bug reports, preferably along with any patches to
distutils that you already have.

Regards,
Martin