[Python-Dev] PEP 407: New release cycle and introducing long-term support versions (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Wed Jan 18 05:32:04 CET 2012

On 1/17/2012 6:42 PM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:29:11 -0500 Terry Reedy<tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

To me, as I understand the proposal, the title is wrong. Our current feather releases already are long-term support versions. They get bugfix releases at close to 6 month intervals for 1 1/2 -2 years and security fixes for 3 years. The only change here is that you propose, for instance, a fixed 6-month interval and 2 year period. As I read this, you propose to introduce a new short-term (interim, preview) feature release along with each bugfix release. Each would have all the bugfixes plus a preview of the new features expected to be in the next long-term release. (I know, this is not exactly how you spun it.)

The main point of my comment is that the new thing you are introducing is not long-term supported versions but short term unsupported versions.

Well, "spinning" is important here. We are not proposing any "preview" releases. These would have the same issue as alphas or betas: nobody

I said nothing about quality. We aim to keep default in near-release condition and seem to be getting better. The new unicode is still getting polished a bit, it seems, after 3 months, but that is fairly unusual.

wants to install them where they could disrupt working applications and libraries.

What we are proposing are first-class releases that are as robust as any other (and usable in production).

But I am dubious that releases that are obsolete in 6 months and lack 3rd party support will see much production use.

It's really about making feature releases more frequent, not making previews available during development.

Given the difficulty of making a complete windows build, it would be nice to have one made available every 6 months, regardless of how it is labeled.

I believe that some people will see and use good-for-6-months releases as previews of the new features that will be in the 'real', normal, bug-fix supported, long-term releases.

Every release is a snapshot of a continuous process, with some extra effort made to tie up some (but not all) of the loose ends.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list