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[Python-ideas] My objections to implicit package directories

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Fri Mar 23 01:34:32 CET 2012 
On Mar 13, 2012, at 09:15 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>And at the end of the day I still really, really, really hate
>directories with a suffix.

I completely agree, for all the reasons you stated.  Especially because would
be extremely difficult to handle migrations from a pre-namespace-packages
world to a post-namespace-packages world with directory suffixes.

For example, let's say Debian/Ubuntu supports Python 3.2 and 3.3.  We can
continue to craft __init__.py files with the old-style namespace package code
at installation time and pretty much do what we're currently doing.  It's
painful but the technology is there so it doesn't change much for us.

But when we can drop support for < 3.3 (or we back port namespace package
support to 3.2) then we can simply drop the code that creates these
__init__.py files at installation time and we'll magically <wink> gain support
for new-style namespace packages.

With directory suffixes, I don't see how this is possible.  I shudder to think
what OS vendors will have to do to rename all the directories of *installed*
packages, let alone have to rebuild all Python 3 packages to support the
renamed directories, when they make the switch to a new-style world.

catching-up-ly y'rs,
-Barry
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