On Mon, 2024-05-06 at 22:39 +0000, Henry Schreiner wrote: > 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.
FWIW, I have heard similar opinions now. Supporting a stack of libraries for all non-EoL Python versions is harder if NumPy must be different. The biggest problem would be if you end up with full support for only NumPy 1 or NumPy 2 (i.e. similar to what numba has to do due to promotion). I hope that is rare enough that it doesn't matter, but I can't say I am sure. (And yeah, if that happens, we might see the ask of downstream to support 3.9 and NumPy 2 in a release. And trying to avoid that was part of why the discussion started I think.) - Sebastian > > 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: sebast...@sipsolutions.net > _______________________________________________ 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
