On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 10:17 PM, Bryan Van de ven <bry...@anaconda.com> wrote: > >> On Nov 8, 2017, at 10:50, Peter Cock <p.j.a.c...@googlemail.com> wrote: >> >> NumPy (and to a lesser extent SciPy) is in a tough position being at the >> bottom of many scientific Python programming stacks. Whenever you >> drop Python 2 support is going to upset someone. > > Existing versions of NumPy will still exist and continue to work with Python > 2.7. If users want to say with Python 2.7, that's fine, they will just have > to rely on those older/LTS versions. I personally would be happy for projects > at the bottom of stacks to take an activist stance and make decisions to > actively encourage movement to Python 3. > >> It is too ambitious to pledge to drop support for Python 2.7 no later than >> 2020, coinciding with the Python development team’s timeline for dropping >> support for Python 2.7? > > Developing NumPy is hard, as it is. Everything that can be done to simplify > things for the current maintainers and help attract new contributors should > be done. It is not reasonable to ask a few (largely volunteer) people to > shoulder the burden and difficulties of supporting Python 2.7 for several > additional *years* of their life. > > I agree entirely with Nick Coghlan's comments from another discussion, and > think they apply equally well in this instance: > > """ > While it's entirely admirable that many upstream developers are generous > enough to help their end users work around this inertia, in the long run > doing so is detrimental for everyone concerned, as long term sustaining > engineering for old releases is genuinely demotivating for upstream > developers (it's a good job, but a lousy way to spend your free time) and for > end users, working around institutional inertia this way reduces the pressure > to actually get the situation addressed properly. > """ > > Thanks, > > Bryan
I agree too - I was trying to phrase that email neutrally as I am not a direct NumPy contributor, but to be more explicit, as someone invested in this ecosystem: I'd fully support NumPy pledging to drop Python 2.7 support no later than 2020. I see signing up to http://www.python3statement.org/ as being about helping publicise this choice. (This is not to say dropping Python 2.7 support in NumPy couldn't happen much sooner than 2020 - the C99 compiler issues sounds like a strong pressure to do so.) Peter _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
