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[Python-Dev] Is adding support for os.PathLike an enhancement or bugfix?

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Thu May 4 11:13:15 EDT 2017 
On 4 May 2017 at 04:15, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> My allergies have hit me hard so I'm not thinking at full capacity, but did
> we ever decide if supporting os.PathLike in the stdlib was viewed as an
> enhancement or bugfix? Specifically I'm thinking of
> https://bugs.python.org/issue30218 for adding support to
> shutil.unpack_archive() and whether it should be backported to 3.6.

I'd treat it as an enhancement, similar to adding native context
management support to various APIs. Otherwise, as Terry pointed out,
we're setting folks up for cases where testing on the latest
maintenance release seems fine, but their app breaks when deployed on
a slightly older version.

It's one thing for that to happen when the app is encountering a
genuine standard library bug, but something else entirely when they're
instead inadvertently relying on an enhancement that we could have
deferred to the next feature release.

Cheers,
Nick.

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