[Python-Dev] Re: Stability and change (original) (raw)

Paul Hughett hughett@mercur.uphs.upenn.edu
Mon, 8 Apr 2002 18:19:45 -0400

As an extension developer, I see considerable advantages to having separate stable and experimental tracks, a la Linux. The key distinction, as I see it, is that the stable track has most of the bugs fixed, is recommended for production use (though not perfect), and that any code that works with stable version N will almost certainly work with version N+1, but it doesn't have all the latest and greatest features. The experimental track, on the other hand, has all the latest and greatest, but they might not work and the details might change from version to version.

I then get several advantages from sticking to the stable versions: (1) Any bugs I find are probably in my extension rather than in the Python implementation. (2) The bugs that I find are probably consistent across most of the minor versions. (3) I only have to write for and support half as many different major versions. Given that the implementations are more stable, my workload is cut by a factor of more than two. (4) The documentation for the stable versions is (probably) better quality, so I have to spend less time experimenting to get things to work as I want.

Given that we distinguish stable and experimental versions (which I regard as an obvious +1), we have the problem of labelling them and I think the Linux system is well suited (but I'm still willing to listen to alternatives): It's well-established and known to a large part of our target audience. It's pretty easy to determine from the version number alone whether it's stable (minor version even) or experimental odd); I wouldn't want to try to remember that--say--versions 2.2.1 through 2.2.19 are experimental while 2.2.20 and up are stable.

Paul Hughett