Larry Hastings <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> I disagree that the Clinic DSL is "verbose".  Certainly I find it
> more succinct than what we do now.

I was referring to the total size of the generated output, not to the DSL.

> On the other hand, the syntax you proposed in the python-dev message
> you cite is insufficient to the task.
[...]

Actually this was Stefan Behnel's suggestion. Thanks for the explanation.

> To answer 5), you're the only C contributor who comes to mind who
> seems unhappy.  Do I understand you correctly that your main pain
> point is that you generate scores of identical functions with the
> C preprocessor, and you see no way to do that with Clinic?  If we
> figured out a way to make that work with Clinic, would that reduce
> your concerns?

No, the main problem is the amount of vertical space that's consumed.
I've looked at os_access etc., and it seems that about 100 lines will
be produced per function. The size of _decimal.c would go up from 5700
to something like 15000 lines.

You can do similar math for posixmodule.c.

Even with tools like ctags, I find code with a huge proportion of boilerplate
harder to understand and to navigate.

Also, I think that specifications of a declarative nature logically belong into
header files, but currently I don't see a nice way to make that happen.