Sriram Srinivasan schrieb:
On Nov 12, 3:56 pm, "Diez B. Roggisch" <de...@nospam.web.de> wrote:
Sriram Srinivasan schrieb:
I guess why every programming language has some kind of a 'standard
library' built in within it.
In my view it must not be called as a 'library' at all. what it does
is like a 'bunch of built-in programs ready-made to do stuff'.
Lets see what a 'library' does:
1. offers books for customers
1.1 lets user select a book by genre, etc
1.2 lets user to use different books of same genre, etc
1.3 lets user to use books by same author, etc for different genre
2. keeps track of all the books + their genre
2.1 first knows what all books it has at present
2.2 when new book comes it is added to the particular shelf sorted by
genre,author,edition, etc.
2.3 when books become old they are kept separately for future
reference
2.4 very old books can be sent to a museum/discarded
I guess no standard library does the minimum of this but wants to be
called a library.
As a python user I always wanted the standard library to have such
features so the user/developer decides to use what set of libraries he
want.
consider the libraries for 2.5 ,2.6, 3K are all available to the user,
the user selects what he wants with something like.
use library 2.5 or use library 2.6 etc.
The 2 main things that the library management interface has to do is
intra library management and inter library management.
intra library mgmt- consider books to be different libraries
(standard, commercial, private, hobby, etc)
inter library mgmt- consider books to be modules inside a library
( standard, commercial, private, hobby, etc)
if somehow we could accomplish this kind of mother of a all plugin/ad-
hoc system that is a real breakthrough.
Advantages:
1. new modules can be added to the stream quickly
2. let the user select what he want to do
3. modules (that interdepend on each other) can be packed into small
distribution and added to the stream quickly without waiting for new
releases
4. solution to problems like py 2.x and 3.x
5. users can be up to date
6. documentation becomes easy + elaborate to users
7. bug managing is easy too
8. more feed back
9. testing also becomes easy
10. many more , i don't know.. you have to find.
Python already has some thing like that __future__ stuff. but my
question is how many people know that? and how many use that? most of
them wait until old crust gets totally removed. that is bad for user
and python. that is why problems like py2.x py3.x originate. If there
is a newer book collection it must always be available at the library.
i must not go to another library to get that book.
You are greatly oversimplifying things, and ignoring a *lot* of issues
here. The reason for __future__ is that it can *break* things if new
features were just introduced. Take the with-statement, reachable in
python2.5 throug
from __future__ import with_statement
It introduces a new keyword, which until then could be happily used as
variable name.
So you can't arbirtarily mix code that is written with one or the other
feature missing.
Then there is the issue of evolving C-APIs (or ABI), wich makes modules
incompatible between interpreters.
And frankly, for most of your list I don't see how you think your
"approach" reaches the stated advantages. Why is documentation becoming
easier? Why bug managing? Why testing?
I'm sorry, but this isn't thought out in any way, it's just wishful
thinking IMHO.
Diez
I don't know if you have used Dev-C++.<http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/
packages/index.html> It has a 'package management' mechanism for the
standard libraries.
No, it hasn't. It has packages for *additional* libraries. C++ has only
a very dim concept of standard-libraries. And those usually ship with
the compiler, as standard-libraries shipped with python.
please see the <http://devpaks.org/> webpage where all the packaged
libraries are stored.
In python we have the PyPI which is equivalent to the http://devpacks.org
but in PyPI the packages are mostly user made applications.
What I want is similar to PyPI but for the python standard libraries,
so that they (libraries) are as add-on as possible.
check this out too.. <http://molhanec.net/devcpphelp/packages.php>
Why do you want that? What is the actual issue you are addressing?
Python's strength is that it comes with a certain set of libs bundled.
Artificially to unbundle them, forcing users to install them separatly
makes little sense, if any. Sure, updating a bug might be *slightly*
easier, but then the standard-libraries are well-tested and decoupling
their evolving from the releases of the core interpreter opens up a
whole can of worms of problems.
There is a tradeoff for both approaches, and one can argue if the
current balance is the right one - but if so, then over concrete
packages, not over the system in general.
Diez
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