Re: Using python + pygtk in Desktop modules (was Re: Revisiting the Gnome Bindings)

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 23:11 +0100, Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
> xSeg, 2004-09-27 às 11:15 -0400, Sean Middleditch escreveu:
> > On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 11:36 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > > Jonathan said:
> > > > I would love to see limited use of python in the desktop release for
> > > > GNOME 2.10.
> > > 
> > > I'd love to see whether this idea can fly, and I like the idea of
> > > maintainers getting what they need for their own specific modules.
> > > 
> > > We all have our different favourite languages, but I think we are all
> > > capable of hacking on Python even if we don't all love it [1], so I don't
> > > think its use would prevent contributions. And it's already widespread on
> > > distros, so I don't think it would be adding a big new dependency. [2]
> > 
> > The biggest problem with Python that I see is that the Python developers
> > constantly break ABI with each release.  User gets a new Python and
> > blam, most of their third-party Python apps and libraries stop working.
> > There's no way to upgrade your distro without also upgrading most of
> > your Python apps and libs with it, which may not be possible for many
> > users until someone else does the work for them.  It's just a huge
> > hassle.
> 
>   That's not true.  Python API and ABI certainly is not broken between
> minor releases.  You can expect minor API changes between major
> versions, of course.  That's why the modules dir changes between major
> releases.  That's also why to some people it looks like python is
> breaking the API, while it just had minor API changes but is forcing you
> to recompile every module for the new version.

Libraries installed in 2.2 are not visible to a 2.3 installation.  If
you try to manually copy them over (which is already more than you
should have to do) Python will complain loudly about the version
mismatch and possible problems.  I'll admit I haven't seen a library
actually not work in this (granted, I've tried a total of two), but the
simple fact that you have to copy around libs and that there is a
version mismatch warning indicates that Python does not in any way
guarantee any sort of compatibility.

Also note that I never said anything about API.  I believe that's
stable.

> 
>   Also note that between python 2.2 final and 2.3 final 19 months
> passed.  That's enought time for 3 GNOME major releases!  I think that's
> stable enough for me.

Minor releases.  It's been more than 19 months since 1.x was around.
<major>.<minor>.<revision>.