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sys.version_info is just asking for a named tuple consisting of major,
minor, micro, releaselevel, and serial.
This is assuming, of course, that bootstrapping doesn't get in the way.

I concur that bootstrapping may be a problem. Using a NamedTuple also
increases the number of loaded modules by 4 (_collections.so, keyword.py
and operator.so).
But we could reimplement it with a PyStructSequence like I did for
sys.float_info. It's straight forward and easy to implement with the
example code in Object/floatobject.c:PyFloat_GetInfo().

Hello, my name is Ross Light. I've written a patch for this, but this
is my first patch, so someone please review.
This does pass all regression tests, but I did have to modify the
test_sys case to not check for sys.version_info being a tuple.

You also need to add unit tests for the new behavior you've implemented.

Oh yes, you're right. Sorry!

+1 on this idea

A couple of further comments:
- please use tabs for indentation consistently.
- please change Doc/library/sys.rst, including adding a versionchanged
indication
- I find the naming of the macros *Flag confusing; to me, a "flag" says
"boolean" - but I'm not a native speaker (of English). Common names are
"item", "field", "element".

Okay, here's a patch with the requested changes. You're right in saying
that flag is usually boolean, I was just going along with several other
files where there's float and int flags (i.e. floatobject.c).

Rather than deleting the isinstance() check from the tests completely, I
suggest changing it to be:
self.assert_(isinstance(vi[:], tuple))
Also, comparing directly with a tuple is also a fairly common use of
version_info so it would be worth adding a test to explicitly guarantee
that comparison:
self.assert_(vi > (1,0,0))
Patch applied and built cleanly for me, but I haven't checked the doc
build yet.

Tests added and new patch uploaded. Anything else, anyone?

The doc string for sys includes:
version_info -- version information as a tuple
I'm not sure changing this to "... as a structseq" makes it any more
useful, but it's more correct. Does anyone have a preference? I'd use
the same wording as float_info, but that's missing from the doc string
(and I'll deal with that as a separate issue).
Other than that, this all looks good to me. I also tested that the docs
build. I'll check it in once I get or invent new wording for the doc string.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 05:56, Eric Smith <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
>
> Eric Smith <eric@trueblade.com> added the comment:
>
> The doc string for sys includes:
> version_info -- version information as a tuple
>
> I'm not sure changing this to "... as a structseq" makes it any more
> useful, but it's more correct. Does anyone have a preference?
Does "... as a named tuple" make sense?
-Brett

"... as a named tuple" works for me. I'll go with that. Thanks!

Technically it's not a named tuple. Calling it named tuple may cause
confusing. http://docs.python.org/library/os.html#os.stat calls it a
structure.

> Eric Smith <eric@trueblade.com> added the comment:
> "... as a named tuple" works for me. I'll go with that. Thanks!
+1 
Remember, "named tuple" is a concept, not a class. It is anything that
provides attribute access as an alternative to indexed access (see the
definition in the glossary where time.struct_time is given as an
example). Running the collections.named_tuple() factory function
creates a new class with named tuple features, but it is just one of
several ways of creating named tuples.

Committed in r69331 (trunk) and r69346 (py3k).