[Python-Dev] Open PEPs and large-scale changes for 3.3 (original) (raw)

Georg Brandl g.brandl at gmx.net
Tue May 1 18:04:03 CEST 2012

On 01.05.2012 17:48, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote:

* PEP 397: Python launcher for Windows I hope to submit a rewrite of this PEP RSN.

Good to hear.

Also, if I missed any obvious candidate PEP or change, please let me know. A big pending change is the switch to a new Visual Studio release. The challenge here is that we need to stop using the outdated VS 2008, but then, VS 2010 will soon be outdated as well, so it would be sad (IMO) if we switch from one outdated tool to the next. Therefore, I would really like to see Python 3.3 use VS 2012, except that this won't be released for a few more months (the release is likely along with the release for Windows 8, which likely happens "this summer"). So what specific VS release we use may depend on whether there will be another alpha release or not (but it may also be that another alpha release still won't buy enough time, so that we use VS 2008 for 2.7, VS 2010 for 3.3, and VS 2012 for 3.4).

Do you know when a more detailed schedule for VS 2012 will be available (and confirmation regarding XP support)? While I agree that it would be best to use the most up-to-date toolchain, we shouldn't defer the beta stage indefinitely if there is no concrete date set.

P.S. There is (as of yet unconfirmed) rumor that VS 2012 won't support XP, which would clearly rule it out for Python 3.3, and likely also for 3.4. It also appears that VS 2012 might include the VS 2010 tool chain, which means that this tool chain won't be that outdated.

P.P.S. this affects primarily the build files and the packaging, but then also affects distutils etc., and the buildbots - for the latter, switching the VS version likely means that all Windows buildbots will break, likely requiring several months for them to come back.

Which is definitely not something we want to do during beta stage.

Georg

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