I agree with you. A more recent LTS release with python 2 support will be good. Cost of maintaining python 2 support is also fairly low (maybe zero actually besides keeping some pre-existing compatibility code).
I believe we are referring to two separate things with support: - Supporting existing releases for patches - I agree that we need to give users a long enough window to upgrade. Great if it happens with an LTS release. Even if it does not, I think it will be fair to offer patches on the last python 2 supporting release during some part of 2020 if that becomes necessary. - Making new releases with python 2 support - Each new Beam release with python 2 support will implicitly extend the lifetime of beam's python 2 support. I do not think we need to extend this to beyond 2019. 2 releases (~ 3 months) after solid python 3 support will very likely put the last python 2 supporting release to last quarter of 2019 already. On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 2:15 AM Robert Bradshaw <rober...@google.com> wrote: > I don't think the second release with robust/recommended Python 3 > support should be the last release with Python 2 support--that is > simply not enough time for people to migrate. (Look at how long it > took us...) It does make a lot of sense to at least have one LTS > release with support for both. > > Regarding timeline, I think we could safely say we expect to support > Python 2 through 2019, likely for some of 2020 (possibly only via an > LTS release), and (very) unlikely beyond 2020. > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 6:34 PM Ahmet Altay <al...@google.com> wrote: > > > > I agree with the sentiment on this thread. Our priority needs to be > offering good python 3 support that we can comfortably recommend users to > switch. Progress on that so far has been promising and I do anticipate that > we will reach there in the near future. > > > > My proposal would be, once we reach to that state, we can mark the first > subsequent Beam release as the last Beam release that supports Python 2. > (Alternatively: in line with the previous experimental/deprecated > discussion we can make 2 more release with python 2 support rather than > just 1 more.) With the current state, we would not give users plenty of > time to upgrade python 3. So in addition, I would suggest we can consider > and upgrade relief by offering something like a 6-month support on the last > python 2 compatible release. We might do that in the context of an LTS > release. > > > > I do not believe we have a timeline we can share with users at this > point. However if we go with this suggestion, we will probably support > python 2 approximately until mid-2020. > > > > Ahmet > > > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:53 AM Tanay Tummalapalli <ttanay...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> > >> We can support Python 2 for some time in 2020, but, we should target a > date no later than 2020 to drop support. > >> If we do plan to drop support for Python 2 in 2020, we should sign the > Python 3 statement[1], declaring that we will "drop support for Python 2.7 > no later than 2020". > >> > >> In addition to the statement, keeping a target release and date(if > possible) or timeline to drop support would also help users to decide when > they need to work on migrating to Python 3. > >> > >> Regards, > >> - TT > >> > >> [1] https://python3statement.org/ > >> > >> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:37 PM Robert Bradshaw <rober...@google.com> > wrote: > >>> > >>> Until Python 3 support for Beam is officially out of beta and > >>> recommended, I don't think we can tell people to stop using Python 2. > >>> Given that 2020 is just over 6 months away, that seems a short > >>> transition time, so I would guess we'll have to continue supporting > >>> Python 2 sometime into 2020. > >>> > >>> A quick survey of users would be valuable here. But first priority is > >>> making Python 3 rock solid so we can unconditionally recommend it over > >>> Python 2. > >>> > >>> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 12:27 PM Ismaël Mejía <ieme...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >>> > > >>> > Python 2 won't be maintained after 2020 [1]. I was wondering what > will > >>> > be our (Beam) plan for this. Other projects [2] have started to alert > >>> > users that support will be removed so maybe we should decide or > policy > >>> > for this too. > >>> > > >>> > [1] https://pythonclock.org/ > >>> > [2] > https://spark.apache.org/news/plan-for-dropping-python-2-support.html >
