[Python-Dev] Policy for versions of system python (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Mon Apr 4 19:19:49 CEST 2011

On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 19:11:52 +0200 "Amaury Forgeot d'Arc" <amauryfa at gmail.com> wrote:

2011/4/4 Eugene Toder <eltoder at gmail.com>: > Hello, > > CPython source code currently contains a number of python scripts (e.g > Python/makeopcodetargets.py, Objects/typeslots.py, Parser/asdlc.py) > that are used during the build of the python interpreter itself. For > this reason they are run with system installed python. What is the > policy regarding > the range of python versions that they should support? > > I looked at some of the scripts and they seem to support both 2 and 3, > starting from at most 2.4. Python/makeopcodetargets.py says at the > top: > # This code should stay compatible with Python 2.3, at least while > # some of the buildbots have Python 2.3 as their system Python. > Is this the official minimal version or do we have this spelled out > more explicitly somewhere?

Normally PEP291 lists the packages which should remain compatible with previous versions of Python: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0291/

That's quite orthogonal. PEP 291 is about public stdlib modules, not build scripts. Furthermore, “this PEP has no bearing on the Python 3 standard library”.

To answer Eugene's question, there's no official policy but the comment at the top of Python/makeopcodetargets.py can indeed serve as an useful guideline. I wonder if we still have buildbots with 2.3 as the system Python, by the way.

Regards

Antoine.

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