Re: Proposed Modules, My Take

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 21:45 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 15:35 -0500, Sean Middleditch wrote:

> > API basically equals ABI in Python terms.  Python *does* break
> 
> For certain values of "break". The application continues to work if the
> application specifies a certain version of python, as it should. I wish

Right.

> that python did not allow applications not to specify a version, but
> it's not the first development environment to make it easy for people to
> make mistakes. I think that Java needs the same attention.

The problem is that Distro A with GNOME 2.10 might have Python 2.3 while
Distro B with GNOME 2.10 might have Python 2.4.  So now if the app does
specify version - like it should - it'll only work on one distro and not
the other.  The funny part is that *both* distros provide the same
platform in terms of what GNOME specifies.  In other words, GNOME is not
specifying a platform at all.

If you say that GNOME 2.10 uses Python 2.3, the above situation can of
course still happen.  In that case, though, one of the distributions is
shipping a broken GNOME platform.  If nothing else, you're at least
shifting the blame, right?  ;-)