[Python-Dev] Module renaming and pickle mechanisms

[Nick Coghlan]

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> Perhaps I have a misunderstanding of the reasoning behind
> doing the renaming in the 2.x branch, but it appears that
> the only reason is to get used to the new names. That's a
> rather low priority argument in comparison to the breakage
> the renaming will cause in the 2.x branch.

I think this is the key point here. The possibility of breaking pickling 
compatibility never came up during the PEP 3108 discussions, so wasn't 
taken into account in deciding whether or not backporting the name 
changes was a good idea.

I think it's pretty clear that the code needs to be moved back into the 
modules with the old names for 2.6. The only question is whether or not 
we put any effort into making the new stdlib organisation usable in 2.x, 
or just rely on 2to3 to fix it (note that the "increasing the common 
subset" argument doesn't really apply, since you can catch the import 
errors in order to try both names).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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