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

Phillip J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Mon Sep 8 21:02:13 EDT 2003

At 04:13 PM 9/8/03 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:

Right, but keep in mind that few people except hardcore Python users are going to upgrade their Python, no matter how painless, just to run some small piece of software they downloaded. They'll just toss the download as one of so many broken things, proof that free software sucks.

I've even seen developers do this... Somebody who works in my department here griped about PEAK not working on their machine and when I went to troubleshoot it, I found they had a lesser version (2.2.1) of Python than the docs explicitly required (2.2.2, which fixed a couple of relevant new-style class bugs). (Makes me think I should put some code in to check the Python version and exit with a helpful error message.)

It does suggest that being able to specify the version of Python required by a script or module, would be a helpful idiom. sys.requireversion(), perhaps? Guess I should make a quick check to be sure you haven't already used the time machine and put this in... :)

Of course, the sad bit is that even if there were a sys.requireversion(), it wouldn't be in the versions where it was actually needed: the older ones!

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