On 21/02/2021 13.13, Victor Stinner wrote: > Hi, > > I propose to actively remove support for *legacy* platforms and > architectures which are not supported by Python according to PEP 11 > rules: hardware no longer sold and end-of-life operating systems. The > removal should be discussed on a case by case basis, but I would like > to get an agreement on the overall idea first. Hobbyists wanting to > support these platforms/archs can continue to support them with > patches maintained outside Python. For example, I consider that the > 16-bit m68k architecture is legacy, whereas the OpenBSD platform is > still actively maintained. [...] > Python has different kinds of platform and architecture supports. In > practice, I would say that we have: > > * (1) Fully supported. Platform/architecture used by core developers > and have at least one working buildbot worker: fully supported. Since > core developers want to use Python on their machine, they fix issues > as soon as they notice them. Examples: x86-64 on Linux, Windows and > macOS. > > * (2) Best effort. Platform/architecture which has a buildbot worker > usually not used by core developers. Regressions (buildbot failures) > are reported to bugs.python.org, if someone investigates and provides > a fix, the fix is merged. But there is usually no "proactive" work to > ensure that Python works "perfectly" on these platforms. Example: > FreeBSD/x86-64. > > * (3) Not (officially) supported. We enter the blurry grey area. There > is no buildbot worker, no core dev use it, but Python contains code > specific to these platforms/architectures. Example: 16-bit m68k and > 31-bit s390 architectures, OpenBSD. > > The Rust programming language has 3 categories of Platform Support, > the last one is :
Thanks Victor! (short reply, I'm heading out) I'm +1 in general for your proposal. I also like the idea to adopt Rust's platform support definition. For 3.10 I propose to add a configure option to guard builds on unsupported / unstable platforms. My draft PR https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/24610/commits/f8d2d56757a9cec7ae4dc721047336eaba097125 implements a checker for unsupported platforms and adds a --enable-unstable-platforms flag. Configuration on unsupported platforms fails unless users explicitly opt-in. The checker serves two purposes: 1) It gives users an opportunity to provide full PEP 11 support (buildbot, engineering time) for a platform. 2) It gives us the leverage to remove a flagged platform in the future or refuse support on BPO. Christian _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/JKSE43ASVGV4DURGOEWVTQIJJM4EBOEI/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
