test_ok1/py/doc/future.txt

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Visions and ideas for further development of the py lib
=======================================================

.. contents::
.. sectnum::

This document tries to describe directions and guiding ideas
for the near-future development of the py lib.  *Note that all
statements within this document - even if they sound factual -
mostly just express thoughts and ideas. They not always refer to 
real code so read with some caution.*  


Distribute tests ad-hoc across multiple platforms
======================================================

After some more refactoring and unification of
the current testing and distribution support code
we'd like to be able to run tests on multiple
platforms simultanously and allow for interaction
and introspection into the (remote) failures. 


Make APIGEN useful for more projects
================================================

The new APIGEN tool offers rich information 
derived from running tests against an application: 
argument types and callsites, i.e. it shows
the places where a particular API is used. 
In its first incarnation, there are still
some specialties that likely prevent it
from documenting APIs for other projects. 
We'd like to evolve to a `py.apigen` tool
that can make use of information provided
by a py.test run. 

Consider APIGEN and pdb integration
===================================

The information provided by APIGEN can be used in many
different ways. An example of this could be to write
an extension to pdb which makes it available.
Imagine you could issue a pdb command 
"info <function name>" and get information
regarding incoming, and outgoing types, possible
exceptions, field types and call sites.

Distribute channels/programs across networks
================================================

Apart from stabilizing setup/teardown procedures
for `py.execnet`_, we'd like to generalize its
implementation to allow connecting two programs
across multiple hosts, i.e. we'd like to arbitrarily
send "channels" across the network. Likely this
will be done by using the "pipe" model, i.e. 
that each channel is actually a pair of endpoints,
both of which can be independently transported 
across the network.  The programs who "own" 
these endpoints remain connected. 

.. _`py.execnet`: execnet.html

Benchmarking and persistent storage 
=========================================

For storing test results, but also benchmarking
and other information, we need a solid way 
to store all kinds of information from test runs. 
We'd like to generate statistics or html-overview 
out of it, but also use such information to determine when
a certain test broke, or when its performance
decreased considerably. 

.. _`restructured text`: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html
.. _`python standard library`: http://www.python.org/doc/2.3.4/lib/lib.html
.. _`xpython EuroPython 2004 talk`: http://codespeak.net/svn/user/hpk/talks/xpython-talk.txt
.. _`under the xpy tree`: http://codespeak.net/svn/user/hpk/xpy/xml.py
.. _`future book`: future.html 
.. _`PEP-324 subprocess module`: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0324.html
.. _`subprocess implementation`: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~astrand/popen5/
.. _`py.test`: test.html


.. _`general-path`: 
.. _`a more general view on path objects`:

Refactor path implementations to use a Filesystem Abstraction 
============================================================= 

It seems like a good idea to refactor all python implementations to
use an internal Filesystem abstraction.  The current code base
would be transformed to have Filesystem implementations for e.g. 
local, subversion and subversion "working copy" filesystems. Today 
the according code is scattered through path-handling code. 

On a related note, Armin Rigo has hacked `pylufs`_ and more recently has
written `pyfuse`_ which allow to 
implement kernel-level linux filesystems with pure python. Now 
the idea is that the mentioned filesystem implementations would 
be directly usable for such linux-filesystem glue code. 

In other words, implementing a `memoryfs`_ or a `dictfs`_ would 
give you two things for free: a filesystem mountable at kernel level
as well as a uniform "path" object allowing you to access your
filesystem in convenient ways.  (At some point it might
even become interesting to think about interfacing to  
`reiserfs v4 features`_ at the Filesystem level but that
is a can of subsequent worms).  

.. _`memoryfs`: http://codespeak.net/svn/user/arigo/hack/pyfuse/memoryfs.py
.. _`dictfs`: http://codespeak.net/pipermail/py-dev/2005-January/000191.html 
.. _`pylufs`: http://codespeak.net/svn/user/arigo/hack/pylufs/
.. _`pyfuse`: http://codespeak.net/svn/user/arigo/hack/pyfuse/
.. _`reiserfs v4 features`: http://www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html


Integrate interactive completion 
==================================

It'd be nice to integrate the bash-like
rlcompleter2_ python command line completer
into the py lib, and making it work remotely
and with pdb. 

.. _rlcompleter2: http://codespeak.net/rlcompleter2/

Consider more features
==================================

There are many more features and useful classes 
that might be nice to integrate.  For example, we might put 
Armin's `lazy list`_ implementation into the py lib. 

.. _`lazy list`: http://codespeak.net/svn/user/arigo/hack/misc/collect.py