[Python-Dev] Process to remove a Python feature (original) (raw)

Victor Stinner vstinner at redhat.com
Fri May 4 06:56:57 EDT 2018

2018-05-02 19:24 GMT+02:00 Brett Cannon <brett at python.org>:

On Wed, 2 May 2018 at 02:12 Victor Stinner <vstinner at redhat.com> wrote:

Does it mean that the Python 3 release following Python 2 end-of-life (2020) will be our next feared "Python 4"? Are we going to remove all deprecated features at once, to maximize incompatibilities and make users unhappy? I don't see why removing features that already raise a DeprecationWarning would require bumping the major version number. Personally, I assumed either Python 3.9 or 3.10 would be the version where we were okay clearing out the stuff that had been raising DeprecationWarning for years.

Sorry, when I wrote "Python 4" I mean "the new Python release which introduces a lot of backward incompatible changes and will annoy everyone". It can be Python 3.9 or 3.10, or whatever version (including 4.3 if you want) :-)

My point is that deprecating a feature is one thing, removing it is something else.

We should slow down feature removal, or more generally reduce the number of backward incompatible changes per release.

Maybe keep a deprecating warning for 10 years is just fine.

Extract of the Zen of Python: "Although practicality beats purity." ;-)

Victor

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