[Python-Dev] New functionality in micro releases (was:Documenting branch policy)

[Anthony Baxter]

>>> Barry Warsaw wrote
> This does point out a problem with the batteries-included philosophy
> though: it's hard to upgrade packages that come with Python.  Say we
> release email 3.0 and you want to use it in Python 2.3, what do you do? 
> You can't just do a distutils install, because site-packages is searched
> after the standard library.  I think we need more flexibility in
> installing distutils packages, so we can install in various locations
> that override standard packages (e.g. user-centric, system-centric,
> etc.).

The approach taken by the XML add-on package doesn't seem to be the 
right approach, either. At the moment your choices are to manually install
the new code over the old, or else have a separate install area that's
manually added to the start of the PYTHONPATH (this is what mailman
does, right?) Neither of these approaches seem ideal. The latter is what
I do for various systems that need newer versions of packages that are
bundled with python, it'd be nice if there was a better way - but I can't
see one.

Anthony