On Oct 13, 2008, at 4:45 PM, Hamish wrote:
I am using python 2.4. Are we going to require python >= 2.5?
Michael:
I would strongly suggest it now. Tracking the release schedule of an
actively developed language like Python is always a moving target,
but
as long as GRASS 7 is in development, I think we should try to do so
within reason--because it will be much harder to do so once we have a
stable GRASS 7.
I am not against requiring py2.5 for grass7, but if it costs us very
little to stay backwards compatible with 2.4, then why not make the
effort?
Are the differences that great? Are we missing out on some huge
advantage?
Just because we may run the latest OSs, many others may not have
upgraded
in the last year, nor want to or are able to.
Python 2.6 is the current stable release and Python 3 is in beta.
So I
think we are still being amply conservative by requiring >= 2.5.
for stability reasons, some of us like to run overly conservative
systems.
(cough debian cough)
To make a dangerous over-generalization, the older feature set
inherited
from py2.4 will be much better tested and bug free than the latest
gee-wiz
fancy py2.6 features. And 2.4 is (just) <2 years old. It's not like
arguing
to support Tcl/Tk 8.0.
My main concern is for future flexibility. Once GRASS 7 is actually
released, it will be a lot harder to switch from 2.4 to 2.5. This
means that if there are features in 2.5 that are useful, we won't be
able to access them. It seems easier to try to keep as up-to-date as
possible during development of this new version of GRASS so that we
won't be numerous versions behind in dependencies like Python after it
is released. It's not a guarantee, but most likely the things that
were stable in 2.4 will still be stable in 2.5.2. FWIW, 2.6 is a
stable version, not a development version.
Michael
_______________________________________________
grass-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
