[Python-Dev] Unclear on the way forward with unsigned integers (original) (raw)

Thomas Wouters thomas@xs4all.net
Mon, 7 Oct 2002 23:22:03 +0200

On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 03:42:14PM -0400, Tim Peters wrote:

[Thomas Wouters] > Well, I can tell you that future has definately worked. Without > it, I would not have been able to upgrade Python on many of our > servers -- and because we don't need newer versions ourselves, they > would not likely be installed at all. As it is, I can safely upgrade > to the next major version when they come out, instead of having to > start a lengthy and very energy-consuming customer-acceptance process. > And this anal attitude towards compatibility isn't just me, it's > company policy ;)

I'm not sure this counts as a success: it doesn't sound like future is helping you migrate, it sounds like future is helping you not migrate so far. What are you going to do when 2.3 comes out, and the things that were future in 2.2 are no longer choices? Some code will break if you move to 2.3. Will you be able to get away with saying "but Python 2.2 warned you about this all along, so we're moving to 2.3 regardless"? If so, then I'd count it a success.

We've already been there (2.0 -> 2.1 -> 2.2) and that's exactly what we did. Customers had several months, some more, to notice warnings about deprecated features and the like, and to use the future import if they wanted newer features. That gives us a very justified 'too bad' if they come complaining afterwards anyway. It also inspires more trust from the more, uhm, 'traditional' companies if you have a clear and documented upgrade path for software. They often have to hire outside programmers to do the work, and they want to know about upkeep as well.

I could talk for hours about how we are switching from an old hysterical-raisin[*] setup that was hard to update and practically impossible to upgrade major portions of, where it would take months to migrate customers from BSDI 3.1 to BSDI 4.0, to our current 'ideal' setup where everything is maintained on a small set of 'master' servers that distribute their changes to hundreds of other servers automatically (which www.python.org is part of, by the way) -- but I won't bore you with the details. Rest assured, future imports (or at least 'no breakage without a warning one major release before', which doesn't strictly require future) make it a heck of a lot easier.

Backwards-doesn't-mean-retarded'ly y'rs,

[*] For some reason the Jargon file lists this as 'hysterical reasons', in case you're wondering what it is. Must be a hysterical raisin.

Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>

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