Discussion:
pygettext.py
Laura Creighton
2002-12-10 13:45:39 UTC
Permalink
This should have gone to the list. Sorry about that.

Laura

------- Forwarded Message
pygettext.py is in Tools/i18n/ in the source distribution of Python 2.2.2 and
many earlier version; if it doesn't get picked up in the binary distribution
it's because Tim Peters' procedure that builds the standard installers for
Windows is quite picky about what it gets from the Tools and Demo
directories. I asked Tim a few months ago and he said something about
there needing to be volunteers to test and maintain such tools &c on ALL
Windows platforms we declare we support: e,g, /98, /SE, /NT4, /2000, /XP.
I demurred because I have nowhere like ALL of them around -- only /98
and /XP right now -- and wasn't all that interested in donating a lot of my
time to testing stuff particularly on platforms that seem designed to make
automation of tests &c quite hard (the leaked Microsoft document about
hotmail's migration to Windows is QUITE instructive in this respect -- and
they only had to worry about ONE Windows version...).
Tim has good reasons for paranoia about differences between Windows
platforms, of course -- e.g. the fact that, as the maintainer of the Windows
installer, HE gets targeted by the zillion of bug reports from hapless users
who don't even know how utterly different the Windows versions are under
the covers. I suspect that dealing with half a dozen issues of the kind "you
r
python thing works not under Thailand versions of Windows 95" (it takes a
while even to elicit that much information from the typical Windows user bug
report -- they NEVER tell you what exact version, language etc they have --
the original reports are always "works not" PERIOD:-) is quite enough to
remove anybody's motivation. BTW, think3 recently switched to supporting
/2000 and /XP only, at least officially, and I've seen enthusiasm about that
in the development and support groups (NOT in the sales and marketing
groups, but...:-).
Alex
er, re: Not sure what snake-farm has to do with this

This is a module which is not included due to not enough testing,
correct? And the Snake Farm claims to test things with the aim
of producing certified to run everywhere stuff. And here we have
a real user who says that this belongs in Python, ie PIT -- he
thinks it belongs with all pythons, period.

Bingo.

This is a significant test case. If we cannot get Tim happy enough to
support include pygettext.py based on the snake farm, then we will learn
(some of at least) what more we need to do with the snake farm in order
to make Pythonlabs happy. If we _can_ then it belongs in PIT. Either
way we win.

Permission to post this whole note -- your reply and my reply to it
back to the snake farm mailing list?

(Alex said yes).

Laura

------- End of Forwarded Message
Tim Peters
2002-12-10 16:18:42 UTC
Permalink
[Laura Creighton]
Post by Laura Creighton
er, re: Not sure what snake-farm has to do with this
This is a module which is not included due to not enough testing,
correct?
pygettext.py lives in a subdirectory under the Tools directory. Such things
never get into the Windows distro unless somebody specifically asks for
them -- they're generally undocumented and have no test cases. I'd be happy
to add the Tools/i18n/ subdirectory anyway, it's simply that nobody
requested it.
Post by Laura Creighton
And the Snake Farm claims to test things with the aim of producing
certified to run everywhere stuff. And here we have a real user who
says that this belongs in Python, ie PIT -- he thinks it belongs with
all pythons, period.
The status of the Tools and Demo directories is muddy. No docs, no tests,
much of it is platform-specific, and some is so old that it doesn't work at
all anymore.
Anders Qvist
2002-12-13 11:21:39 UTC
Permalink
Post by Tim Peters
[Laura Creighton]
Post by Laura Creighton
er, re: Not sure what snake-farm has to do with this
This is a module which is not included due to not enough testing,
correct?
pygettext.py lives in a subdirectory under the Tools directory. Such things
never get into the Windows distro unless somebody specifically asks for
them -- they're generally undocumented and have no test cases. I'd be happy
to add the Tools/i18n/ subdirectory anyway, it's simply that nobody
requested it.
Post by Laura Creighton
And the Snake Farm claims to test things with the aim of producing
certified to run everywhere stuff. And here we have a real user who
says that this belongs in Python, ie PIT -- he thinks it belongs with
all pythons, period.
The status of the Tools and Demo directories is muddy. No docs, no tests,
much of it is platform-specific, and some is so old that it doesn't work at
all anymore.
There are currently no tests except from regression tests done in the
Farm. One might test the contents of "make install" or similar
targets, to verify that they follow a certain structure and contains
certain files. This would be similar to the LSB conformance testing.
--
Anders "Quest" Qvist

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters
will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks
to the Internet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Wilensky
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