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[Python-Dev] BDFL ruling request: should we block forever waiting for high-quality random bits?

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Thu Jun 16 16:50:55 EDT 2016 
On 16 June 2016 at 13:09, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2016, at 01:01 PM, David Mertz wrote:
>
>>It seems to me that backporting 'secrets' and putting it on Warehouse would
>>be a lot more productive than complaining about 3.5.2 reverting to (almost)
>>the behavior of 2.3-3.4.
>
> Very wise suggestion indeed.  We have all kinds of stdlib modules backported
> and released as third party packages.  Why not secrets too?  If such were on
> PyPI, I'd happily package it up for the Debian ecosystem.  Problem solved
> <wink>.

The secrets module is just a collection of one liners pulling together
other stdlib components that have been around for years - the main
problem it aims to address is one of discoverability (rather than one
of code complexity), while also eliminating the "simulation is in the
standard library, secrecy requires a third party module" discrepancy
in the long term.

Once you're aware the problem exists, the easiest way to use it in a
version independent manner is to just copy the relevant snippet into
your own project's utility library - adding an entire new dependency
to your project just for those utility functions would be overkill.

If you *do* add a dependency, you'd typically be better off with
something more comprehensive and tailored to the particular problem
domain you're dealing with, like passlib or cryptography or
itsdangerous.

Cheers,
Nick.

P.S. Having the secrets module available on PyPI wouldn't *hurt*, I
just don't think it would help much.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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