[Python-Dev] New functionality in micro releases (was: Documenting branch policy) (original) (raw)

Just van Rossum just at letterror.com
Sun Sep 7 23:36:43 EDT 2003

Jack Jansen wrote:

On 7-sep-03, at 21:15, Martin v. Löwis wrote: > This question is heavily debated. Alex Martelli, for example, > favours a policy where new (in a strict sense) features are > acceptable if they don't break anything, and are "minor", in some > sense.

With Python 2.3 included in MacOSX 10.3 I would be heavily opposed to this. I know, I've done it myself all the time in the past (with MacPython for OS9), but with Python 2.3 we have the situation that the majority of Python installations (I think it's safe to take the guess that MacOSX 10.3 installations will soon outnumber all other Pythons together) will stay at 2.3 until the next release of MacOSX.

It's been a huge pain with 2.2 vs. 2.2.1 even: all stuff written for 2.2.1 that uses booleans does not work on plain 2.2, which is what's installed on OSX 10.2. Which sortof kills the advantage of having a Python installed with the OS to begin with. In retrospect, I would have been strongly against adding booleans to 2.2.1 for this reason. Apart from real bugs, I think every program that works on 2.x.y should work on 2.x.z, regardless of whether y > z or y < z.

Just

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