[Python-Dev] Stability and Change (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Wed, 10 Apr 2002 20:40:59 -0400

It's absolutely reasonable to find those with an interest in maintaining a stable track and get them to do some of the work. I'm more attuned to helping with packaging and distribution simply because I can't program in C.

That's fine. We need all the help we can get!

I think the solution is somewhat outside the core Python team's hands.

Yup, those hands are already full.

Those of us who really care about stability need to get together and forge the consensus that we can skip some releases; those of you wanting to forge ahead just need to accept that there are sound reasons for many people to have an upgrade cycle longer than 6 months.

I accept it.

Having said that, we just designate the 18-month ones arbitrarily, so that (for example) ReportLab and Zope and eGenix are fairly likely to want the same Python on a customer box in a given quarter.

Do you think it's necessary to synchronize between different companies? Feel free to try, but there could be all sorts of reasons why you may differ. Since you can have several different minor (but not micro) releases on the same system (at least Unix) it shouldn't be a big deal -- if you require Python 2.x, just put

#! /usr/bin/env python2.x

at the top of your files.

In summary I'd like a note from Guido on the download page saying "we do releases every 6 months but if you prefer a longer cycle, go for 2.1.3 for now, and I will designate a stable 2.4.X release some time in 2003". It doesn't mean 2.2 or 2.3 is bad in any way, but it gives us a decent planning horizon.

Do I really have to spell it out?

Also, I don't want to recommend any particular release. I'd like to just say "pick any release you're comfortable with, and stick with it as long as you like."

Maybe EuroPython is the time to pick this up.

I'll be there!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)