[Python-Dev] Drop OS/2 support? (original) (raw)

Andrew MacIntyre andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au
Sat Apr 17 05:19:36 CEST 2010

Victor Stinner wrote:

Python contains code specific to OS/2 (eg. see Modules/posixmodule.c). I read in Wikipedia that IBM has discontinued OS/2 support in 2005. Do we still support OS/2 or not?

As was recently discussed, what constitutes "support" varies in perception.

Python's source contains support for it to be built on OS/2, but python.org's normal build process doesn't deliver binaries.

OS/2 lives on as eCS. It is a second tier platform, akin to Cygwin (which also has some source level support but is not part of the normal python.org release process).

I'm asking because I'm working on a patch modifying OS2 specific code, but I'm unable to compile nor test my changes. And on IRC we told me that nobody knows/uses OS/2.

If we support OS/2, we need a buildbot.

Build-bots for first tier platforms (Windows, Linux & OS/X) are useful for the python.org developer community.

IMO build-bots for secondary platforms are the more the responsibility of that platform's community on the basis of best management of python.org resources.

I don't think anyone reasonable would expect patch suppliers to deal with second tier platforms - I certainly don't. It is nice to get heads-up messages about issues that might involve such support though, and it shouldn't take much searching to find me to enquire.

My patch: http://bugs.python.org/issue8391 (os.execvpe() doesn't support surrogates in env).

I'll look at it when I get a chance, but I'm not expecting that my input should affect your patch and I'm not expecting you to try and deal with the issue on OS/2. The 3.x branch needs quite a bit of work on OS/2 to deal with Unicode, as OS/2 was one of the earlier OSes with full multiple language support and IBM developed a unique API. I'm still struggling to come to terms with this, partly because I myself don't "need" it.

Regards, Andrew.

--

Andrew I MacIntyre "These thoughts are mine alone..." E-mail: andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au (pref) | Snail: PO Box 370 andymac at pcug.org.au (alt) | Belconnen ACT 2616 Web: http://www.andymac.org/ | Australia

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