[Python-Dev] Continuing 2.x (original) (raw)

Victor Stinner victor.stinner at haypocalc.com
Thu Oct 28 11:38:20 CEST 2010

Le jeudi 28 octobre 2010 05:12:09, James Y Knight a écrit :

The python community has already decided many times over that Python2 is dead and Python3 is the future. ... I think you'd be best off doing so on your own infrastructure: convincing the python developers to support such a thing is quite unlikely, and furthermore, completely unnecessary.

I don't really care to Python 2.x anymore: I consider Python 2.7 as mature and very stable. New features can still be developed as Python or C extensions (browse the Python package index to get some examples).

I don't want to touch the Python2 core (the interpreter or the standard library) because it is too expensive (in time).

I prefer to focus on Python3 because Python3 core has a better design: strict separation between bytes and characters, no more short integer type, no more old style class, etc. It's easier to work on Python3 core. Backport a patch from Python3 to Python2 takes between 10 minutes and 3 hours (or maybe more on complex patches) because the function names, C macros, even file names, (...), has changed. And I don't know automatic tools to convert a Python3 patch to a Python2 patch (eg. a "3to2" tool, for patches). I don't want to spend 3 hours or more on a "dead project".

But when I find a bug in Python3, I immediatly check if it does also exist in Python2. And if both version are affected, I try to fix all versions (if it doesn't break the API).

-- Victor Stinner http://www.haypocalc.com/

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