[Python-Dev] PEP 3003 - Python Language Moratorium

[Brett Cannon]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 08:02, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>> The clarification I need is will this in any way influence when
>> modules are removed. If they stay in for the life of a major version
>> then I want it made clear that bug fixes for the code take lower
>> priority over all other code in the standard library.
>
> I think we should be as cautious as ever with removing modules. We've
> had our chance for clean-up without abandon with Py3k; now we should
> stick with our commitment to backwards compatibility. In fact, we
> should probably be *more* conservative than we already were given that
> the amount of code written in Python is always increasing and hence
> the cumulative pain caused by incompatible changes will increase too.
>
> I'm fine with silent deprecations or requiring a flag to turn on
> deprecation warnings (like Java does).
>

We can discuss this on the stdlib-sig and come back with a proposal on
how to update PEP 4 with an explicit policy on how to handle
deprecations (either Nick's proposal or some flag, and then how long
to let the deprecation last, i.e. three versions or the life of a
major version of Python).

> We're not yet at the point where C is, but who wouldn't be next to C
> on the TIOBE index? :-)
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
>