[Python-Dev] 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Wed Nov 4 23:13:41 CET 2009

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:20, ssteinerX at gmail.com <ssteinerx at gmail.com> wrote:

On Nov 4, 2009, at 1:06 AM, Lennart Regebro wrote:

2009/11/3 ssteinerX at gmail.com <ssteinerx at gmail.com>:

On Nov 2, 2009, at 7:26 PM, James Y Knight wrote:

It really sounds like you're saying that switching to 3.x isn't worth the cost to you, but you want to force people (including yourself) to do so anyways, because ...? Because that's the future of Python Or not. Maybe it's a dead branch of Python? Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back to 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with increasing levels of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its own by running out of numbers.

I am going to say this once: we are not killing off Python 3.

First off, Python 3 is not even a year old! Considering people have not fully migrated to 2.6, should we kill it off as well? There is a certain lack of perspective on time scale. This is especially true when Guido himself has said on multiple occasions that moving the community to 3.x would be a mult-year process, as in 3-5 years process, not 11 months.

Second, the people calling for us to potentially kill 3.x and just keep 2.x floating along have yet to say that they have tried porting their code and that it was difficult. Every person who has stepped forward stating they have done a port has said it was actually relatively straight-forward. Not only that, we have anecdotal evidence from multiple people that you can support code way back to whatever old version of Python RHEL is running.

Third, the same people calling for the death of 3.x have not suggested they have used it extensively (if at all). I have yet to hear anyone say that 3.x is not at least a nice improvement, if not a huge one. I for one find 3.x more enjoyable to work in than 2.x, and that's saying a lot since I obviously loved Python 2.x enough to get involved in its development. I have also never heard anyone ever say, "I gave 3.x a fair shake and honestly, I wish I had not wasted the time." Wait until 3to2 gets to a good state (which will happen; it's my next project -- after I either get us moved to Hg or I simply give up on it -- and I know I am not the only core developer planning on making it happen).

I realize that there is some fear that it will be time wasted if people port their code to 3.x if it somehow burns out. But do you honestly think that python-dev would leave you hanging like that? Let's take a worst-case scenario here and say that direct pick-up of 3.x after a couple years never happens. Fine, we then begin to backport features. But if you already ported your code then chances are you already support the new features. And you know what one of the first things we would back port would be? Unicode strings and bytes. And since that is the hardest thing to port to, you will have not wasted any time.

In other words the calling for the death of 3.x is rather premature and honestly unfair until people have actually tried to port their code in earnest and it has been a couple of years for the community to catch up to what python-dev is pushing out the door (which always takes a while no matter what minor version has been released).

-Brett

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list