No new PEPS will be approved for Python in 2018, with BDFL election pending.

2 min read

According to an email exchange, Python will not approve of any proposals or PEPs until January 2019 as the team is planning to choose a new leader, with a deadline set for January 1, 2019.

The news comes after Python founder and “Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL)” Guido van Rossum, announced earlier this month that he was standing down from the decision-making process.

Here’s a quick look at Why Guido may have quit as the Python chief (BDFL).

A PEP – or Python Enhancement Proposal – is a design document consisting of information important to the Python community. If a new feature is to be added to the language, it is first detailed in a PEP. It will include technical specifications as well as the rationale for the feature.

A passionate discussion regarding PEP 576, 579 and 580 started last week on the python-dev community with Jeroen Demeyer, a Cython contributor, stating how he finally came up with real-life benchmarks proving why a faster C calling protocol is required in Python. He implemented Cython compilation of SageMath on Python 2.7.15 (SageMath is not yet ported to Python 3). But, he mentioned that the conclusions of his implementation should be valid for newer Python versions as well.

Guido’s, in his capacity as a core developer, responded back to this implementation request. In the email thread, he writes that “Jeroen was asked to provide benchmarks but only provided them for Python 2. The reasoning that not much has changed could affect the benchmarks feels a bit optimistic, that’s all. The new BDFL may be less demanding though.”

Stefan Behnel, a core Cython developer, was disappointed with Rossum’s response.. He writes that because Demeyer has already done “the work to clean up the current implementation… it would be very sad if this chance was wasted, and we would have to remain with the current implementation”

But it seems that Guido is not convinced. According to Guido, no PEPS will be approved until the Python core dev team have elected a “new BDFL or come up with some other process for accepting PEPs, no action will be taken on this PEP.”

The mail says “right now, there is no-one who can approve this PEP, and you will have to wait until 2019 until there is”.

Many Python users are worried about this decision:

All that’s left to do now is wait for more updates from the Python-dev community. Behnel states “I just hope that Python development won’t stall completely. Even if no formal action can be taken on this PEP (or any other), I hope that there will still be informal discussion”.

For more coverage on this news, check out the official mail posts on python-dev.