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Lib: Improve IDLE launcher script for clarity and safety #138100

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Lib: Improve IDLE launcher script for clarity and safety #138100

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TheAhumMaitra
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This PR refactors the IDLE launcher script (IDLE.py) to improve clarity and maintainability.

Changes include:

  • Simplified the way idlelib is added to sys.path for non-standard locations.
  • Added comments explaining the purpose of each step.
  • Ensured safer insertion into sys.path without overwriting existing paths.
  • Made the script easier to read and understand for contributors and beginners.

This helps prevent errors when running IDLE from development versions of Python and makes the codebase more maintainable.

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bedevere-app bot commented Aug 24, 2025

Most changes to Python require a NEWS entry. Add one using the blurb_it web app or the blurb command-line tool.

If this change has little impact on Python users, wait for a maintainer to apply the skip news label instead.

@picnixz
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picnixz commented Aug 24, 2025

  • This doesn't improve safety in any way.
  • It's a purely cosmetic change. There is only one change that we could accept, that is putting main() inside an if __name__ == '__main__' guard but I'm not sure about its intended behavior (doing this would prevent loading IDLE by simply importing it, so it's a behavioral change). This should be discussed in an issue if needed but I don't think we need to.

@picnixz picnixz closed this Aug 24, 2025
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@TheAhumMaitra @picnixz