bpo-30218: support PathLike in shutil.unpack_archive

[JelleZijlstra]

No description provided.

[mention-bot]

@JelleZijlstra, thanks for your PR! By analyzing the history of the files in this pull request, we identified @serhiy-storchaka, @hynek and @larryhastings to be potential reviewers.

[brettcannon]

One minor thing, otherwise LGTM!

[brettcannon]

I notice that the tests show extract_dir working for a path-like object, but there's no explicit conversion here. If it's because something else explicitly covers that then please add a comment. Otherwise just explicitly do the os.fspath() conversion for extract_dir.

[JelleZijlstra]

I think it works because it's only passed to other functions that already accept PathLikes. However, it is passed to a handler function that is specific to a file format and maybe some handlers don't accept PathLike, so I'll just add os.fspath for it anyway.

[brettcannon]

Do the docs need updating to mention path-like support?

[JelleZijlstra]

Not sure about the docs; my thinking is that every function using a path should support PathLike in 3.6 and up, so there's no point in explicitly noting it. But I'm open to adding it if you prefer being explicit.

[brettcannon]

I was asking more in case the docs specifically mention that the arguments are expected to be a string or something like shutil.copyfile()'s documentation (opened bpo-30235 to track that). Since the docs don't phrase things that way for unpack_archive() it's fine. So just address the one review comment and this can then be merged and backported.

[brettcannon]

Just realized I forgot to ask if you could you add an entry to Misc/NEWS for this, @JelleZijlstra ? And don't put the entry at the top of the section to minimize potential merge conflicts.

[brettcannon]

Now I just have to decide if this a bugfix or not. 🤔 I don't remember off the top of my head if we decided that os.PathLike support was considered a bugfix or not.

[brettcannon]

After discussing things on python-dev, this has been flagged as an enhancement, hence a need to at least add a versionchanged mention in the docs (e.g. "Added support for path-like objects.").

Sorry for all the little edits on this, @JelleZijlstra .

[berkerpeksag]

I think a documentation change is needed. We've updated the documentation even if the module was already (indirectly) accept path-like objects.