[TIP] Pythoscope proposal

[Brett Cannon]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Michał Kwiatkowski
<constant.beta at gmail.com> wrote:
[SNIP]
> There are quite a few tools that explored Python source code analysis.
> Those include:
>  - source code style checkers, like pylint[2], PyChecker[3], and PyFlakes[4]
>  - CodeInvestigator[5] debugger
>  - Python4Ply[6], lexer and parser for Python
>  - cyclomatic complexity analyzer[7]
>  - type annotators, like PyPy type annotator[8] and annotate script[9]
>  - Cheesecake codeparser.py[10]
>
> So we have a plenty of examples of using the stdlib's (now deprecated)
> compiler module[11]. Any thoughts whether we should use the new _ast
> module[12] appreciated. My guess is that we shouldn't, because we
> don't want to force people into using the latest stable version of
> Python. They may not have a choice while working on their legacy
> applications.
>

Well, the question is if you want to deal with a smaller group of
user's now or become obsolete later. Realize that if you use the
compiler package you will not work with Python 3.0 at all. And once
2.6 comes out you will have the latest stable version and one version
back with the _ast module.

But since I am the one who deprecated the compiler package, I'm biased. =)

-Brett