[PATCH 4 of 4 RFC] pycompat: patch (del|get|has|set)attr to accept bytes on Python 3

[Yuya Nishihara]

On Sun, 14 Aug 2016 09:27:16 -0700, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 2:33 AM, Yuya Nishihara <yuya at tcha.org> wrote:
> > # HG changeset patch
> > # User Yuya Nishihara <yuya at tcha.org>
> > # Date 1471146681 -32400
> > #      Sun Aug 14 12:51:21 2016 +0900
> > # Node ID 2a300f882c077fa014046db96b545f6aff771d32
> > # Parent  d53bd633898ec6edafccea9f798d314699faf90a
> > pycompat: patch (del|get|has|set)attr to accept bytes on Python 3
> >
> > getattr() and setattr() are widely used in our code. We wouldn't probably
> > want to rewrite every single call of getattr/setattr. delattr() and
> > hasattr()
> > aren't that important, but they are functions of the same kind.
> >
> > Another option would be util.(get|set)attr.
> 
> I'm generally opposed to modifying the behavior of stdlib functionality
> because, well, it's modifying the stdlib. Extensions may load
> packages/modules that rely on the default behavior, perhaps in subtle ways.
> I would prefer proxy functions (possibly in util.py) over modifying the
> standard library.

Maybe we can insert "from mercurial.pycompat import xrange, getattr, ..."
by our Py3k importer, which should be better than hacking builtins and we
can avoid bulk rewrites.