api stability

[John Arbash Meinel]

Robert Collins wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 20:08 -0600, John Arbash Meinel wrote:
> 

...

>>
>>I think it would be great to get a stable api soon. I don't know about
>>February as a specific deadline.
>>
>>I've often wished things were stable a little while longer. But I think
>>the biggest thing for us is to get the major features put in. And then
>>go around and make almost everything private so that we can change it :)
> 
> 
> I think putting stuff in with the minimal public interface is good - we
> should not need to run around post hoc.

Sure, just figuring out what is a sufficiently expressive minimal public
interface is the trick.

> 
> 
>>I guess the only problem is the difference between "private - this isn't
>>stable yet" and "private - you shouldn't use this" or "private - This is
>>only for subclasses to use, not public".
> 
> 
> __foo -> private to me
> _foo -> private to me and subclasses
> foo -> public.
> 
> Note that _foo is therefor a public symbol if the class is public.
> 
> I.e. imagine
> module.SomeClass._foo. Thats public in terms of API because I can:
> class MySomeClass(module.SomeClass):
>   def _foo(self):
>     """I now depend on _foo."""
> 
> Now imagine
> module._PrivateClass._foo. That is not public : we dont guarantee
> compatability if you do:
> class MyPrivateClass(module._PrivateClass):
>   def _foo(self):
>     """This is user-beware territory."""
> 
> 
> Rob 
> 

I'm okay with that.
John
=:->
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