Re: External Deps: Minimal Python dependency

[Johan Dahlin <jdahlin async com br>]

Sebastian Pölsterl wrote:
> Vincent Untz schrieb:
> > Le mardi 22 juillet 2008, à 17:56 +0200, Sebastian Pölsterl a écrit :
> > > Hi!
> > >
> > > As mentioned in [1] sqlite is a blessed external dependency now. I 
> > > want  to use sqlite for Deskbar-Applet, too. Because, Python 2.5 has 
> > > a  built-in sqlite module I suggest increasing the minimal version to 
> > > 2.5  from currently 2.4.3 . Of course, Python 2.5 has more benefits [2].
> > >
> > > [1]:  
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2008-July/msg00090.html 
> > >
> > > [2]: http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/whatsnew25.html
> >
> > (heh, I should read ddl before replying to mails)
> >
> > So, I took a quick look at the second link. That's all cool, but can we
> > get an overview of what is really useful in there for us?
> >
> > Vincent
> * Various speed improvements regarding re module, sets, unicode 
> operations (substring, split, en-/decode) and handling exceptions [1].

I don't understand why optimizations is an argument in bumping the minimum 
required version. Sure, those who want to make their python program
can upgrade, but is the intention really to tell users of 2.4 that they 
can't use it because we think it's too slow?

> * New ElementTree package for processing XML. It's easy to understand 
> and fast.

Available as an external module.

> * New hashlib package which supports previously unsupported SHA-224,
> SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512.

I bet this is not useful for any GNOME applications.

> * New ctypes package which lets you load libraries and calling functions 
> in them.

Available as an external module.

Which leaves us with the 'with statement' as a new feature worthwhile to 
upgrade for.

Is it worth telling users of RHEL5, Debian Etch etc that they can't use the 
GNOME release because you want to use the with statement in your code? Is it 
really that difficult to write code without using it?

Johan