This will be messier for projects building wheels and wanting to support non-EoL Python versions. To build a wheel with anything other than pybind11, you now need the oldest supported NumPy for Python < 3.9, the latest NumPy 1 for Python 3.9, and NumPy 2 for Python 3.10+. I don't know if that's important in the decision, but thought I'd point it out. Also, according to NEP 29, 3.10+ only became the requirement a couple of weeks ago, while it has been months since SPEC 0 dropped it. I don't think either document really details what to do when there's a really long development cycle that spans a cutoff date.
If you drop 3.9 from the metadata, I don't think there's any need to secretly keep support. It's too hard to actually use it, and it's not guaranteed to work; it would be better to just tell anyone needing 3.9 to use a beta version when it was still supported. (Rant below) To be fair, I've never understood NEP 29's need to limit Python versions to 42 months after the 2.7 issue was resolved with official Python EoL. Now there's a standard (60 months, exactly 5 versions), and almost all the rest of the ecosystem supports it. This just wedges a divide in the ecosystem between "scientific" and "everyone else". It makes me have to think "is this a scientific Python project? Or a general Python project?" when I really shouldn't have to on every project. I really didn't understand SPEC 0's _tightening_ it to 36 months (and I was at the developer summit where this was decided, and stated I was interested in being involved in this, but was never included in any discussion on it, so not sure how this was even decided). Dropping Python doesn't hurt projects that are mostly stable, but ones that are not are really hurt by it. Python 3.8 is still heavily used; people don't mind that NumPy dropped 3.8 support because an older version works fine. But if there's a major change, then it makes smaller or new projects have to do extra work. Current numbers (as of May 4th) for downloads of manylinux wheels: * 2.7: 2% * 3.5: 0.3% * 3.6: 7.4% * 3.7: 20.4% * 3.8: 23.0% * 3.9: 15.3% * 3.10: 20.8% * 3.11: 8.4% * 3.12: 2.3% So only 30% of users have Python 3.10+ or newer. Most smaller or newer projects can more than double their user base by supporting 3.8+. I could even argue that 3.7+ is still helpful for a new project. Once a library is large and stable, then it can go higher, even 3.13+ and not hurt anyone unless there's a major development. Little rant finished. :) _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- numpy-discussion@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to numpy-discussion-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/numpy-discussion.python.org/ Member address: arch...@mail-archive.com
