[Biopython-dev] PEP8 lower case module names?

[Peter Cock]

On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:43 AM, Kai Blin
<kai.blin at biotech.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I realize I'm late to this party, but I was asked to give an opinion
> in the SearchIO thread.
>
> On 2012-09-06 09:06, Peter Cock wrote:
>> For single user machines, where the single user has only a small
>> collection of scripts this isn't such an issue. For any shared
>> server, or user with lots of Biopython scripts (some of which may
>> have been written by different people), you would be forced into a
>> mass change at one go.
>>
>> You would also have considerable hassle later on with any attempt
>> to re-run old scripts.
>
> In my opinion, this is where python virtualenv [1] can really make
> life easier, and I'd recommend this for running old library versions
> anyway.
>
> I'd rather do the correct change now, for every version of python, and
> explain to people how to set up virtualenvs for their older scripts.

I don't think this is practical - you'd have a *lot* of explaining to do
for all the users who'd be bitten by such a big non-backward
compatible change (and associated systems administrators).

Indirectly it sounds like you like the lower case name idea - what
do you think about making this switch under Python 3? (This will
only inconvenience the relatively small number of early adopters
already trying Biopython under Python 3 - but it would be another
bump for people transitioning from Python 2 to 3).

Peter