On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:03:15 +1000 Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > 1. I believe the PEP currently proposes just taking the "no more than > 9" limit off the minor version of the language. Feature releases would > just come out every 6 months, with every 4th release flagged as a > language release.
With the moratorium suggestion factored in, yes. The PEP insists on support duration rather than the breadth of changes, though. I think that's a more important piece of information for users. (you don't care whether or not new language constructs were added, if you were not planning to use them) > I don't like this scheme because it tries to use one number (the minor > version field) to cover two very different concepts (stdlib updates > and language updates). While technically feasible, this is > unnecessarily obscure and confusing for end users. As an end user I wouldn't really care whether a release is "stdlib changes only" or "language/builtins additions too" (especially in a language like Python where the boundaries are somewhat blurry). I think this distinction is useful mainly for experts and therefore not worth complicating version numbering for. > 2. Brett's alternative proposal is that we switch to using the major > version for language releases and the minor version for stdlib > releases. We would then release 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 at 6 month > intervals, with 4.0 then being released in August 2014 as a new > language version. The main problem I see with this is that Python 3 was a big disruptive event for the community, and calling a new version "Python 4" may make people anxious at the prospect of compatibility breakage. Instead of spending some time advertising that "Python 4" is a safe upgrade, perhaps we could simply call it "Python 3.X+1"? (and, as you point out, keep "Python X+1" for when we want to change the language in incompatible ways again) > So in August this year, we would release 3.3+12.08, followed by > 3.3+13.02, 3.3+13.08, 3.3+14.02 at 6 month intervals, and then the > next language release as 3.4+14.08. If someone refers to just Python > 3.3, then the "at least stdlib 12.08" is implied. If they refer to > Python stdlib 12.08, 13.02, 13.08 or 14.02, then it is the dependency > on "Python 3.3" that is implied. If I were a casual user of a piece of software, I'd really find such a numbering scheme complicated and intimidating. I don't think most users want such a level of information. Regards Antoine. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
