[Python-Dev] [RELEASED] Python 2.7 alpha 2 (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Mon Jan 11 10:59:57 CET 2010

Neil Schemenauer writes:

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 09:06:15PM -0800, Brett Cannon wrote:

If people start taking the carrots we have added to 3.x and backporting them to keep the 2.x series alive you are essentially making the 3.x DOA by negating its benefits which I personally don't agree with.

Well, I think it's worse than that, and I don't think you really mean "DOA", anyway. (Feel free to correct me, of course.)

The problem I see with backporting lots of stuff, and/or adding new features that aren't in 3.0, to 2.x is that it will make 2.x even cruftier, when it was already crufty enough that Guido (and almost all of python-dev) bit the bullet and said "backward compatibility is no excuse for keeping something in 3.0".

That surely means that a lot of python-dev denizens will declare non-support 2.x for x > 7. It's not going to be the gradual migration we've seen over the past few months as active people start to spend more and more time on 3 vs. 2; it will be a watershed. Especially if these are new features merged from outside that the "small active segment" doesn't know anything about. From the users' point of view, that amounts to a fork, even if it's internal and "friendly".

I think we have got to the heart of our disagreement. Assume that some superhuman takes all the backwards compatible goodies from 3.x and merges them into 2.x.

Isn't that a bit ridiculous? I just don't see any evidence that anything like that is going to happen. Worse, if we assume it will happen, I don't see any way to assess whether (1) Python 3 goes belly up, (2) there's an effective fork confusing the users and draining the energy of python-dev, or (3) everybody goes "wow!" because it's so cool that everybody wants to keep maintaining an extra 3 branches indefinitely.

My opinion is that given the clear direction the "small active segment" is going, telling the users anything but what Brett proposed is disinformation.

I guess I have more confidence in Python 3 than you do. I don't see why Python 2.x needs to be artificially limited so that Python 3 can benefit.

It's not for Python 3, which you, I, and I'm pretty sure Brett-in-his- heart-of-hearts agree can take care of itself because it is better than Python 2. It's for Python, and for the Python community.

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