As Reynold pointed out, we don't have to drop Python 2 support right off the bat. We can just deprecate it with Spark 3.0, which would allow us to actually drop it at a later 3.x release.
On Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 2:09 PM Erik Erlandson <eerla...@redhat.com> wrote: > On a separate dev@spark thread, I raised a question of whether or not to > support python 2 in Apache Spark, going forward into Spark 3.0. > > Python-2 is going EOL <https://github.com/python/devguide/pull/344> at > the end of 2019. The upcoming release of Spark 3.0 is an opportunity to > make breaking changes to Spark's APIs, and so it is a good time to consider > support for Python-2 on PySpark. > > Key advantages to dropping Python 2 are: > > - Support for PySpark becomes significantly easier. > - Avoid having to support Python 2 until Spark 4.0, which is likely to > imply supporting Python 2 for some time after it goes EOL. > > (Note that supporting python 2 after EOL means, among other things, that > PySpark would be supporting a version of python that was no longer > receiving security patches) > > The main disadvantage is that PySpark users who have legacy python-2 code > would have to migrate their code to python 3 to take advantage of Spark 3.0 > > This decision obviously has large implications for the Apache Spark > community and we want to solicit community feedback. > >
