Is BasicType useful?

[Joachim Durchholz]

Class BasicType defines no methods or attributes, its only subclass is
BasicMeta.
Neither class is in the sympy namespace.

Does BasicType serve any purpose that BasicMeta would not?

(Context: I found this while exploring SymPy's metaclass hierarchy.
Metaclass status should not affect the outcome of this question though.)

[Aaron Meurer]

I suppose it must be there to distinguish subtypes from other subtypes
of BasicMeta that aren't BasicType. Either that or it used to have
methods but they were deleted, and the class was not deleted. I would
look into the git history of it using git blame.

Aaron Meurer

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[Joachim Durchholz]

Am 10.03.2015 um 19:39 schrieb Aaron Meurer:
> I suppose it must be there to distinguish subtypes from other subtypes
> of BasicMeta that aren't BasicType.

No other subtypes exist.

> Either that or it used to have
> methods but they were deleted, and the class was not deleted. I would
> look into the git history of it using git blame.

It was created by Ondrej in ddd0349 (2007-09-23), as an empty superclass
to MetaBasicMeths.
It wasn't used as a superclass to anything else, not even then (but
MetaBasicMeths got renamed to BasicMeta along the way).
Maybe he anticipated that BasicType would acquire methods over time.

I'll try and see what happens if I remove it and change all references
to BasicMeta.

[Aaron Meurer]

I think this explains the issue
http://docs.sympy.org/latest/guide.html#functions (search for "meta").
By the way, I still think we should remove this document
https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/2807.

Aaron Meurer

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[Joachim Durchholz]

Am 10.03.2015 um 20:25 schrieb Aaron Meurer:
> I think this explains the issue
> http://docs.sympy.org/latest/guide.html#functions (search for "meta").

That's outdated, MetaBasicMeths does not exist anymore (it might have
been removed in 2008 but I'm not 100% sure).

> By the way, I still think we should remove this document
> https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/2807.

Heh. I agree with "rather no docs than bad docs".
I have no idea who could work on salvaging what's still useful. But
maybe if there is nobody around who could or would maintain this, it's
better to get rid of it and reduce the maintenance burden.

[Aaron Meurer]

On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 3:02 PM, Joachim Durchholz <j...@durchholz.org> wrote:
> Am 10.03.2015 um 20:25 schrieb Aaron Meurer:
>>
>> I think this explains the issue
>> http://docs.sympy.org/latest/guide.html#functions (search for "meta").
>
>
> That's outdated, MetaBasicMeths does not exist anymore (it might have been
> removed in 2008 but I'm not 100% sure).

Right. So it's probably safe to remove the subtype.

>
>> By the way, I still think we should remove this document
>> https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/2807.
>
>
> Heh. I agree with "rather no docs than bad docs".
> I have no idea who could work on salvaging what's still useful. But maybe if
> there is nobody around who could or would maintain this, it's better to get
> rid of it and reduce the maintenance burden.

That was my opinion too but others disagreed so it wasn't merged.

Aaron Meurer

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[Joachim Durchholz]

Am 10.03.2015 um 21:10 schrieb Aaron Meurer:
>>> By the way, I still think we should remove this document
>>> https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/2807.
>>
>>
>> Heh. I agree with "rather no docs than bad docs".
>> I have no idea who could work on salvaging what's still useful. But maybe if
>> there is nobody around who could or would maintain this, it's better to get
>> rid of it and reduce the maintenance burden.
>
> That was my opinion too but others disagreed so it wasn't merged.

I see.
Adding my opinion.