Python finally offloads some batteries [LWN.net]

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 18, 2022 8:25 UTC (Fri) by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)
In reply to: Python finally offloads some batteries by logang
Parent article: Python finally offloads some batteries

It's a bit different with Python, because the language itself is - pretty much - stable. They don't go out of their way to break core language interfaces in every version.

Linux developers, on the other hand, have no qualms about changing core interfaces in any old version. They don't exactly *go out of their way to*, especially where it would complicate backporting fixes to older versions. But look at the discussions happening around list iterators. They clearly are willing to change fundamental interfaces quite readily.

This means that out-of-tree modules for the kernel are in a very different level of support (none at all) than third-party modules for Python. The whole *point* of Python is a stable interface against which to write third-party modules! That's what a language *is*!

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Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 18, 2022 15:46 UTC (Fri) by logang (subscriber, #127618) [Link] (1 responses)

That seems like wishful thinking at best. It is not nearly as stable as you think it is. Most python packages only support of subset of python reasons for lots of good reasons. If large swaths of the python library are now in PyPi they also now gain complicated dependencies between them as well. Maybe the kernel's driver API experiences more churn, but the point remains.

As NYKevin pointed out the requests module depends on urllib (yikes) so if that module gets removed from the standard library then you've broken requests for the latest release of python.

If tons of important modules are ejected then the core teams haS to stop removing or deprecating things to avoid the same dependancy hell the kernel would have with out of tree drivers.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Posted Mar 18, 2022 17:40 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

> Most python packages only support of subset of python reasons for lots of good reasons.

In my experience, this "subset" is usually of the form "version 3.x or later" for some value of x (or, for a handful of very old libraries, "version 2.7.x only"). I don't believe I have seen a whole lot of libraries that set a maximum version, other than the ones which were never ported to 3.