On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM, <mar...@v.loewis.de> wrote: > > Quoting Benjamin Peterson <benja...@python.org>: > >> This means we need to talk about how many more 2.7 releases there are >> going to be. At the release of 2.7.0, I thought we promised 5 years of >> bugfix maintenance, but my memory may be fuddled. > > > I'd like to promote the idea to abandon 2.7 bug fix releases earlier > than that, e.g. along with the release of 3.4. My recollection is > that "we" didn't actually promise any specific time frame; I recall > that Guido said that Python 2.7 would be supported "indefinitely", > which is not "infinitely" [1]. The Whats New says [2] > > """It’s very likely the 2.7 release will have a longer period of > maintenance compared to earlier 2.x versions.""" > > which explicitly refuses to set a date. Of course, individual committers > may have promised a more specific policy publicly in the past. > > Since Christian asked: I'll likely continue to make binary releases > for Windows as along as Benjamin declares releases to be bug fix > releases. However, it will become increasingly difficult for users > to actually use these releases to build extension modules since > Microsoft decided to take VS 2008 Express offline (VS 2008 remains > available to MSDN subscribers; getting it from a store might > also be difficult in 2014). > > I wonder whether the burden of maintaining three branches for bug > fixes (2.7, 3.3, default) and three more for security fixes > (2.6, 3.1, 3.2) is really sustainable for committers. I wouldn't > want to back off wrt. security fixes, and 2.6 will soon fall out > of the promised 5 years (after the initial release). However, > stopping to accept bug fixes for 2.7 would IMO significantly reduce > the load for committers - it would certainly continue to get > security fixes, and (for the time being) "indefinitely" so. > > Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling > prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce > an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached. > > I'm doubtful with respect to a community-managed ongoing 2.7 bug > fix release (i.e. I doubt that it will happen); the same was > discussed for a next 2.x feature release, and it hasn't happened. > OTOH, it is very likely that people will publish their own patches > to 2.7 throughout the net, just as the Linux distributions already > do. It may even happen that some volunteer offers to publish a > combined repository for such patches, with various members of the > community having write access to such a repository (but no formal > releases coming out of that).
Martin, you guys are shooting yourself in a foot. Almost noone uses python 3 in production, even at pycon, which is the more progressive crowd. There is a giant group of people using python that are not as vocal. While I bet some are using Python 3, Python 2 is incredibly popular for the "long tail" of libraries and applications. How much is 2.7 a burden? There are no major changes and it's pretty cool to consider it "done". For what is worth, we'll maintain the stdlib part of 2.7 past 2 years. It would be cool if python-dev participated in that. Cheers, fijal _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
