[PyQt] SIP v5 Roadmap

[Giovanni Bajo]

On dom, 2010-11-28 at 15:12 +0000, Phil Thompson wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:35:38 +0100, Giovanni Bajo <rasky at develer.com>
> wrote:
> > On lun, 2010-11-22 at 16:06 +0000, Phil Thompson wrote:
> >> I've added a roadmap for SIP v5 at...
> >> 
> >> http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/sip/roadmap
> >> 
> >> Comments welcome.
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm concerned by this:
> > 
> > ====================================================================
> > The code generator will be reimplemented using Python v3. It will be
> > able to be used as a standalone application or a package.
> > ====================================================================
> > 
> > This means that users of SIP will need to install Python v3 as a
> > dependency to run sip, even for projects using Python v2. Additional
> > build dependencies can really really be painful to handle.
> > 
> > I suggest you revisit this, unless you plan to make it work with Python
> > v2 through 3to2 or similar. An alternative option would be to write it
> > in 2to3-friendly dialect of Python v2, so that in the future when you
> > are ready to drop Python 2 support you can simply drop the original v2
> > source code and use the generated version as new basis for development.
> 
> I don't see the dependency as a problem. There is no problem installing
> Python v2 and v3 side by side on Windows. Linux distros have been packaging
> Python v3 to run alongside v2 for some time.

Multiply that for different projects running different Python versions,
requiring different SIP/PyQt versions, maybe different C++ compilers,
and now different Python3 versions.

Your statement is true for the simplest setups. I help people building
stuff as part of my job (yes, it can be a job in itself :), and any
additional dependency can cause problems, make the build system harder,
and cause unnecessary slowdown in development.

There are already strong dependencies between sip versions, Python
versions and PyQt versions (and I'm ignoring Visual Studio issues,
PyInstaller issues, build system issues, and whatnot), and I fear what
might happen if we add another additional and incompatible Python
version to the picture.

As a concrete example, I'm working right now on an internal one-file
custom build of Python bundled with sip/PyQt (+ other modules) as
builtins, and a import hook to import sip modules (= they get
transparently recompiled, much like pyximport does for Cython); by
adding Python3 to the picture, one would need this internal Python build
to ship with a Python3 within it.

Now that I think of it, this might be less of a problem for me if SIP4
and SIP5 work together at the binary level. For instance, will it be
possible to build PyQt4 with SIP5 and PyQwt with SIP4, and import them
within the same process, pass objects back and forth, etc.? In this
case, I could keep on using SIP4 wherever I feel like SIP5 would
complicate build environments too much.
-- 
Giovanni Bajo      ::  Develer S.r.l.
rasky at develer.com  ::  http://www.develer.com

Blog: http://giovanni.bajo.it
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