Dear MADlib community, We have received a number of inquiries regarding python 3 support. As python 2 support is reduced on modern databases, operating systems, and python libraries; I believe it is important that we work on python 3 support as well.
On the technical side, we already have a branch that works with python 3 on Greenplum 7 beta. However, there are quite a lot of changes in the code to support it, and trying to merge it into a single codebase that supports both python2 and python3 would be very challenging if not impossible. In addition, the python3 releases have to be specifically marked to ensure that the users can find the correct artifact for installing and upgrading. In light of these issues, I propose the following: Move python3 support to MADlib 2.0. MADlib 1.XX will continue to support only python2 and MADlib 2.XX will support only python3. We will keep the master branch for 1.XX and create a new official branch for 2.XX from which we will also make releases. The main target for development will be MADlib 2.XX and if possible we will backport the new features and bug fixes to the 1.XX branch. MADlib 1.XX users won't be able to upgrade to MADlib 2.XX (even if their db has both python2 and python3 support) and will have to reinstall. Please let us know what you think about this proposal and any alternatives you can think of. Apache guidelines in situations like these suggest employing lazy consensus; if no opposing ideas are proposed in the next 72 hours, we will start working on this approach. Thanks, Orhan Kislal
