On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 12:37:46AM -0500, Ryan Schmidt wrote: > In what way are we still "on" python 2.4? Ports that use python should offer > variants, and should default to 2.7.
My take is that the py24-* ports are typically just hanging around not being used but not usually not hurting anything either, especially if we're using the unified python portgroup. So is it worth keeping them around? There are a couple specific things that are inconvenient about python 2.4 ports, but they are fairly minor: - py-foo typically installs a python2.4 port (but not always). This is an unfortunate historical artifact; someone typing `port install py-foo` probably would not expect or want this. - py24- and py25- ports install into a different directory structure. This usually isn't a problem, but occasionally complicates things. (IIRC, python.link_binaries behaves differently?) IMO, the more serious problems just relate to having more than one version of Python around: - it's bad enough if MacPorts decides it needs to install a new version of Python for some reason. It's terrible if MacPorts decides to install an old version of Python for no reason other than that nobody updated some port's default dependency from py26-foo to py27-foo. I think we're mostly doing OK with this, but there are some ports that probably ought to be updated. - increasingly, as we update Python modules, we're finding that they've dropped support for python24 or other older versions. I've noticd this a couple times. So what do we do then? Drop the py24- subport entirely? Keep it around with an older version? The latter makes maintaining the port non-trivially more complicated, particularly if there are patchfiles or other version-specific code. - it just adds more configurations that we ostensibly support but that no one really tests We probably ought to take a good look at ports depending on python 2.4/2.5/2.6 and see if there's a good reason they're not using 2.7. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I wouldn't be opposed to dropping support for python24/python25 (and some of the older perl versions?) just to simplify things, but could be convinced otherwise if there's good reason to keep them around. Dan -- Dan R. K. Ports MIT CSAIL http://drkp.net/ _______________________________________________ macports-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-dev
