On Tue, Jul 05, 2016 at 08:01:43PM +0200, Petr Viktorin wrote: > In the tkinter case, compiling for source is easy on a developer's > computer, but doing that on a headless server brings in devel files for > the entire graphical environment. > Are you saying Python on servers should have a way to do turtle > graphics, otherwise it's not Python?
That's a really good question. I don't think we have an exact answer to "What counts as Python?". It's not like EMCAScript (Javascript) or C where there's a standard that defines the language and standard modules. We just have some de facto guidelines: - CPython is definitely Python; - Jython is surely Python, even if it lacks the byte-code of CPython and some things behave slightly differently; - MicroPython is probably Python, because nobody expects to be able to run Tkinter GUI apps on an embedded device with 256K or RAM; but it's hard to make that judgement except on a case-by-case basis. I think though that even if there's no documented line, most people recognise that there are "core" and "non-core" standard modules. dis and tkinter are non-core: if µPython leaves out tkinter, nobody will be surprised; if Jython leaves out dis, nobody will hold it against them; but if they leave out math or htmllib that's another story. So a headless server can probably leave out tkinter; but a desktop shouldn't. [...] > > The other extreme is Javascript/Node.js, where the "just use pip" (or > > npm in this case) philosophy has been taken to such extremes that one > > developer practically brought down the entire Node.js ecosystem by > > withdrawing an eleven line module, left-pad, in a fit of pique. > > > > Being open source, the damage was routed around quite quickly, but > > still, I think it's a good cautionary example of how a technological > > advance can transform a programming culture to the worse. > > I don't understand the analogy. Should the eleven-line module have been > in Node's stdlib? Outside of stdlib, people are doing this. The point is that Javascript/Node.js is so lacking in batteries that the community culture has gravitated to an extreme version of "just use pip". I'm not suggesting that you, or anyone else, has proposed that Python do the same, only that there's a balance to be found between the extremes of "everything in the Python ecosystem should be part of the standard installation" and "next to nothing should be part of the standard installation". The hard part is deciding where that balance should be :-) -- Steve _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
