On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Tres Seaver <tsea...@palladion.com> wrote: [..] > The phantom "distutils API" > doesn't exist, which means that almost any improvement (and I don't deny > that such improvements are possible) potentially breaks substantial > installed codebases. In this sense, fixing distutils is like working > without tests, because you don't know until too late that you've broken > something.
First of all, I have not said that Distutils will stay backward compatible. If the compatibility is broken at some point, it'll have a deprecation process, that's all. And a backport will be provided for the previous Python versions. But we can't talk about breaking compatibility until we do have a new design in our hands that fixes some problems, and require to break the comaptibility. Next, the distutils code base is test-covered around 80% now (depending on your platform) Maybe you ignore about it, but I have been working to raise the test coverage during the last year, (it went from 20% to 80%) Next, there are buildbots now that builds projects like NumPy to make sure the trunk still works. Moving some code from the commands to some new APIs will not blow those commands because they are tested. Meaning that the old tests will have to still pass once some code has been moved. That's the whole point of test coverage, and a basic rule in refactoring code. So I don't really understand why you are saying that we will go blind in refactoring some stuff. Last, I am now not listening anymore to this "distutils must be fully replaced" answers, they are going no where, because Distutils will not be dropped for the reasons I've already mentioned earlier. I'll focus on the design work we are doing with David now to enhance Distutils on his use cases. As a matter of fact, we have made progress in sharing knowledge and trying to find designs that fits our brains, and that the only stuff that matters to me at this point. And if it doesn't make it to Distutils 2.7/3.2, I expect Distribute to be the incubator of those particular changes. If some some people want to build a brand new shiny tool from scratch, good luck then. If some others want to help in Distutils, welcome then. Tarek _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
