[Python-Dev] PEP 3003 - Python Language Moratorium

[Jesse Noller]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>>
>> I'm against restricting deprecation warnings within the stdlib as part
>> of this. I actually want more things cleaned up and possibly
>> deprecated. That being said, a deprecation warning just means we will
>> remove it One Day - anything being deprecated will need a PEP and
>> follow the long path to actual removal.
>>
>> So, -1 from me ;)
>>
>> jesse
>
> Actually, I think Dirkjan has a point. I'm not sure that we need
> another moratorium (that's a rather dramatic kind of decision which
> should be very rare indeed) but I do agree that deprecations are often
> more of a pain than they're worth.
>
> For example, take the deprecation of the md5 and sha modules in Python
> 2.6. They make it a bit of a pain to write code that *cleanly*
> supports Python 2.4 (doesn't have hashlib) through 2.6 (warns when
> importing md5 instead of hashlib). You can silence the warning, but
> that is in itself not particularly clean, and users really hate having
> the warnings.
>
> I have come to the conclusion that there are better ways to
> pre-announce that a module is going to disappear instead of
> deprecation warnings.
>

I'm interested in hearing how to handle "pending removals" other than
deprecation warnings - I guess I'm against the idea that we shouldn't
remove/plan to remove things from the stdlib and signal those
intentions to users during the moratorium.

The mechanics of that can be something other than deprecation
warnings, we can add a line to the current moratorium that puts the
nix on deprecation warnings (because yes, Dirkjan is right - they can
be a pain) but we should outline the alternative process.

jesse