[Python-Dev] What is the rationale behind source only releases? (original) (raw)

Serhiy Storchaka storchaka at gmail.com
Wed May 16 04🔞51 EDT 2018

16.05.18 07:35, Alex Walters пише:

In the spirit of learning why there is a fence across the road before I tear it down out of ignorance [1], I'd like to know the rationale behind source only releases of cpython. I have an opinion on their utility and perhaps an idea about changing them, but I'd like to know why they are done (as opposed to source+binary releases or no release at all) before I head over to python-ideas. Is this documented somewhere where my google-fu can't find it?

Taking a snapshot of sources at the random point of time is dangerous. You can get broken sources. Making a source only release means that sources are in consistent state, most buildbots are green, and core developers made necessary changes and stopped merging risky changes for some period before the release.

The difference with source+binary releases is that latter adds additional burden to release managers: building binaries and installers on different platforms and publishing results on the site.

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