Echoing Nick. I don't see any strong reason to drop Python 2 support. We typically drop support for X when it is rarely used and support for X is long past EOL. Python 2 is still very popular, and depending on the statistics it might be more popular than Python 3.
On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 9:29 AM Nicholas Chammas <nicholas.cham...@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't think it makes sense to deprecate or drop support for Python 2.7 > until at least 2020, when 2.7 itself will be EOLed. (As of Spark 2.0, > Python 2.6 support is deprecated and will be removed by Spark 2.2. Python > 2.7 is only version of Python 2 that's still fully supported.) > > Given the widespread industry use of Python 2.7, and the fact that it is > supported upstream by the Python core developers until 2020, I don't see > why Spark should even consider dropping support for it before then. There > is, of course, additional ongoing work to support Python 2.7, but it seems > more than justified by its level of use and popularity in the broader > community. And I say that as someone who almost exclusively develops in > Python 3.5+ these days. > > Perhaps by 2018 the industry usage of Python 2 will drop precipitously and > merit a discussion about dropping support, but I think at this point it's > premature to discuss that and we should just wait and see. > > Nick > > > On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 10:59 AM Maciej Szymkiewicz <mszymkiew...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Hi, > > I am aware there was a previous discussion about dropping support for > different platforms ( > http://apache-spark-developers-list.1001551.n3.nabble.com/Straw-poll-dropping-support-for-things-like-Scala-2-10-td19553.html) > but somehow it has been dominated by Scala and JVM and never touched the > subject of Python 2. > > Some facts: > > - Python 2 End Of Life is scheduled for 2020 ( > http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/) without with "no > guarantee that bugfix releases will be made on a regular basis" until then. > - Almost all commonly used libraries already support Python 3 ( > https://python3wos.appspot.com/). A single exception that can be > important for Spark is thrift (Python 3 support is already present on the > master) and transitively PyHive and Blaze. > - Supporting both Python 2 and Python 3 introduces significant > technical debt. In practice Python 3 is a different language with backward > incompatible syntax and growing number of features which won't be > backported to 2.x. > > Suggestions: > > - We need a public discussion about possible date for dropping Python > 2 support. > - Early 2018 should give enough time for a graceful transition. > > -- > Best, > Maciej > >
