Peps Download

[Marion Georgi]

Becausethe PEPs are maintained as text files in a versioned repository, their revision history is the historical record of the feature proposal.

(footnote) This historical record is available by the normal git commands for retrieving older revisions, and can also be browsed via HTTP here: GitHub - python/peps: Python Enhancement Proposals

One common approach to this in the standards development world (e.g. the IETF) is to not alter documents after they are distributed, but to distribute updated versions, e.g. as a subsequent Internet Draft or via links to errata for approved RFCs.

Another common approach is to include version numbers or last-modified timestamps in the documents. This would allow even casual readers to track whether they were viewing the same version they read at some previous time.

My guess is that the latter web-server-based approach is easiest and best leverages our modern tooling. But I include the others both because there may be other reasons for tracking versioning information for PEPs themselves, and to help others like me who might be wondering how the PEP process differs from other similar processes.

Could you say why you want this? The PEP process is decades old at this point and we have not felt the need for versioning, so I would like to understand what your specific use-case is before we start considering changing software and/or processes to accommodate it.

Good question. My notion is to do it automatically by just using the git data, rather than putting a burden on authors. My writeup of Issue #1564 notes some simple git commands to retrieve all the mod dates for all the PEPs.

It also suggests linking directly to the modification history for each PEP so users can easily see the actual changes.

My notion, as outlined at

was to do the work in what I understand to be the current workflow, using data straight from the git repo that is created as described at _generation.html, rather than via web queries. Are you doing this in dynamically in Javascript?

I also suggested pointing to the whole history, e.g. -0012.txt, which makes it easy to see previous changes to the same document, rather than a single commit.

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