Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Maciej Fijalkowski]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
>
> Quoting Benjamin Peterson :
>
>> This means we need to talk about how many more 2.7 releases there are
>> going to be. At the release of 2.7.0, I thought we promised 5 years of
>> bugfix maintenance, but my memory may be fuddled.
>
>
> I'd like to promote the idea to abandon 2.7 bug fix releases earlier
> than that, e.g. along with the release of 3.4. My recollection is
> that "we" didn't actually promise any specific time frame; I recall
> that Guido said that Python 2.7 would be supported "indefinitely",
> which is not "infinitely" [1]. The Whats New says [2]
>
> """It’s very likely the 2.7 release will have a longer period of
> maintenance compared to earlier 2.x versions."""
>
> which explicitly refuses to set a date. Of course, individual committers
> may have promised a more specific policy publicly in the past.
>
> Since Christian asked: I'll likely continue to make binary releases
> for Windows as along as Benjamin declares releases to be bug fix
> releases. However, it will become increasingly difficult for users
> to actually use these releases to build extension modules since
> Microsoft decided to take VS 2008 Express offline (VS 2008 remains
> available to MSDN subscribers; getting it from a store might
> also be difficult in 2014).
>
> I wonder whether the burden of maintaining three branches for bug
> fixes (2.7, 3.3, default) and three more for security fixes
> (2.6, 3.1, 3.2) is really sustainable for committers. I wouldn't
> want to back off wrt. security fixes, and 2.6 will soon fall out
> of the promised 5 years (after the initial release). However,
> stopping to accept bug fixes for 2.7 would IMO significantly reduce
> the load for committers - it would certainly continue to get
> security fixes, and (for the time being) "indefinitely" so.
>
> Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
> prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
> an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.
>
> I'm doubtful with respect to a community-managed ongoing 2.7 bug
> fix release (i.e. I doubt that it will happen); the same was
> discussed for a next 2.x feature release, and it hasn't happened.
> OTOH, it is very likely that people will publish their own patches
> to 2.7 throughout the net, just as the Linux distributions already
> do. It may even happen that some volunteer offers to publish a
> combined repository for such patches, with various members of the
> community having write access to such a repository (but no formal
> releases coming out of that).

Martin, you guys are shooting yourself in a foot. Almost noone uses
python 3 in production, even at pycon, which is the more progressive
crowd. There is a giant group of people using python that are not as
vocal. While I bet some are using Python 3, Python 2 is incredibly
popular for the "long tail" of libraries and applications. How much is
2.7 a burden? There are no major changes and it's pretty cool to
consider it "done".

For what is worth, we'll maintain the stdlib part of 2.7 past 2 years.
It would be cool if python-dev participated in that.

Cheers,
fijal
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Lennart Regebro]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
> Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
> prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
> an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.

Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
increase because an end is announced or reached.

//Lennart
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[martin]

Martin, you guys are shooting yourself in a foot. Almost noone uses
python 3 in production, even at pycon, which is the more progressive
crowd. There is a giant group of people using python that are not as
vocal. While I bet some are using Python 3, Python 2 is incredibly
popular for the "long tail" of libraries and applications. How much is
2.7 a burden? There are no major changes and it's pretty cool to
consider it "done".


Indeed - hence I think it is just fine to stop applying bug fixes to it,
as well. People for whom it works fine today apparently don't run into any
significant bugs. They can happily continue to use it as-is for ten or more
years. It will not go away just when we reduce changes to security fixes.
It will remain available for download, the documentation will keep being
online, people can continue to ask questions about it on python-list, and
continue to get answers.

Stopping to apply bug fixes does not really *end* Python 2.7.

It's only that people who *do* run into bugs don't have the option anymore
that we will eventually publish a fixed release. Their options reduce to
- port to 3.x (particularly interesting if Python 3.x *already* fixed it)
- find a work-around
- maintain a bug fix locally
- do something else entirely (like abandoning Python)

People deserve to know our plans, so we really need to agree on them and
then announce them (see PEP 404). However, people (IMO) have no right to
expect us to maintain Python 2.7 until they migrate to 3.x. If we would do
that, they will never migrate.

Regards,
Martin


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Maciej Fijalkowski]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:44 AM,   wrote:
>> Martin, you guys are shooting yourself in a foot. Almost noone uses
>> python 3 in production, even at pycon, which is the more progressive
>> crowd. There is a giant group of people using python that are not as
>> vocal. While I bet some are using Python 3, Python 2 is incredibly
>> popular for the "long tail" of libraries and applications. How much is
>> 2.7 a burden? There are no major changes and it's pretty cool to
>> consider it "done".
>
>
> Indeed - hence I think it is just fine to stop applying bug fixes to it,
> as well. People for whom it works fine today apparently don't run into any
> significant bugs. They can happily continue to use it as-is for ten or more
> years. It will not go away just when we reduce changes to security fixes.
> It will remain available for download, the documentation will keep being
> online, people can continue to ask questions about it on python-list, and
> continue to get answers.

No, they manage to work around issues. It doesn't mean there are no
bugs or bugfixes won't help. But I'm not going to argue with you, I
don't think you can be convinced about anything here.

>
> Stopping to apply bug fixes does not really *end* Python 2.7.
>
> It's only that people who *do* run into bugs don't have the option anymore
> that we will eventually publish a fixed release. Their options reduce to
> - port to 3.x (particularly interesting if Python 3.x *already* fixed it)
> - find a work-around
> - maintain a bug fix locally
> - do something else entirely (like abandoning Python)
>
> People deserve to know our plans, so we really need to agree on them and
> then announce them (see PEP 404). However, people (IMO) have no right to
> expect us to maintain Python 2.7 until they migrate to 3.x. If we would do
> that, they will never migrate.
>
> Regards,
> Martin

As far as I remember python 3 was supposed to be a better language,
not just "the maintained version". It's such a bad idea to force
people to go through porting because 2.x is not maintained any more.
If they never migrate on the premises of python 3 being a better
language what does it say about python 3?

I cannot of course tell you what you should do in your free time
though, if you don't feel like doing anything in that area, fine.
We'll maintain the stdlib of Python 2.7 past the 2 year mark though.

Cheers,
fijal
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[martin]

Quoting Lennart Regebro :


On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:

Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.


Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
increase because an end is announced or reached.


I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).

With an announced end-of-life, I'm certain that migration rate will
increase, because people will now urge their suppliers, pointing
to the announcement. With Benjamin's proposed schedule, they would
still have two years for their suppliers to act. Even under my proposed
schedule, there would be plenty of time.

Also, this is all free software (at least most of it).
Nobody can *really* be stuck on a not-ported dependency, as they
could always port it themselves, and even fork if the developer
refuses to integrate the port (and you know that this actually
happens).

Regards,
Martin


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stefan Behnel]

Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 09:52:
> As far as I remember python 3 was supposed to be a better language,
> not just "the maintained version". It's such a bad idea to force
> people to go through porting because 2.x is not maintained any more.
> If they never migrate on the premises of python 3 being a better
> language what does it say about python 3?

Nothing. Most people simply don't do the switch all by themselves before
you can convince that that what they have in their hands is actually a dead
parrot.

Stefan


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Steven D'Aprano]

On 07/04/13 17:44, mar...@v.loewis.de wrote:

Martin, you guys are shooting yourself in a foot. Almost noone uses
python 3 in production, even at pycon, which is the more progressive
crowd. There is a giant group of people using python that are not as
vocal. While I bet some are using Python 3, Python 2 is incredibly
popular for the "long tail" of libraries and applications. How much is
2.7 a burden? There are no major changes and it's pretty cool to
consider it "done".


Indeed - hence I think it is just fine to stop applying bug fixes to it,
as well. People for whom it works fine today apparently don't run into any
significant bugs. They can happily continue to use it as-is for ten or more
years. It will not go away just when we reduce changes to security fixes.
It will remain available for download, the documentation will keep being
online, people can continue to ask questions about it on python-list, and
continue to get answers.



+1

On the python-list@ mailing list, we occasionally get posts from people
still using Python 2.3, and regularly from people on 2.5.



Stopping to apply bug fixes does not really *end* Python 2.7.

It's only that people who *do* run into bugs don't have the option anymore
that we will eventually publish a fixed release. Their options reduce to
- port to 3.x (particularly interesting if Python 3.x *already* fixed it)
- find a work-around
- maintain a bug fix locally
- do something else entirely (like abandoning Python)


Or, if they have paid support from a vendor like Red Hat, hassle the vendor
for a fix. Speaking of 2.3, as I understand it Red Hat still offer paid
support for 2.3, which won't expire for a few more years, and security fixes
only for some years beyond that.

[By memory, which may not be entirely accurate.]



--
Steven
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Lennart Regebro]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM,   wrote:
> Quoting Lennart Regebro :
>> Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
>> staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
>> increase because an end is announced or reached.
>
> I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
> been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).

Company policies that mean you are using old distros with no support
for Python 3 and not being allowed to install it from source is also a
reason, but yes, the main one being libraries/frameworks, yes.

> With an announced end-of-life, I'm certain that migration rate will
> increase, because people will now urge their suppliers, pointing
> to the announcement.

The suppliers are often people who are maintaining an open source
library of some sort. When I see questions on stackoverflow about
support for X on Python 3 I sometimes take a quick look of the state
of libraries, check out their mailing list etc. It's *always* a
problem of that the maintainers themselves are stuck on Python 2.7 or
earlier together with porting being problematic. I think Python 3.3
with the u'' literal is much more important for increased adoption
there than the end of life of 2.7 as it often makes porting much
easier. But even so sometimes API's needs to be changed, etc, so it
takes a big concerted effort of both the maintainers, and the few
people that are interested in porting it to Python 3. And when you get
one new person asking for Python 3 support every 6 months, that's just
not enough people.

That's the hangup IMO. Ending Python 2.7 will make no difference there
either good or bad, I think. We need to find other ways of improving
adoption.

As for the company policies, in theory it sounds like a good argument
that ending Python 2.7 would be incentive for these to change. But
these are often slow moving companies that are happy using outdated
software, and are clearly using it already, or they would be on
distros that *did* support Python 3 already. :-)

> Nobody can *really* be stuck on a not-ported dependency, as they
> could always port it themselves, and even fork if the developer
> refuses to integrate the port (and you know that this actually
> happens).

Yes, but time/money/knowledge is at a premium. Also self-confidence. A
lot of people probably think porting is much harder than it is. :-)

//Lennart
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Steven D'Aprano]

On 07/04/13 17:52, Maciej Fijalkowski wrote:

If they never migrate on the premises of python 3 being a better
language what does it say about python 3?


Very little. People stick with languages for all sorts of reasons,
including:

- It's what I know
- I don't like change
- That's what the client insists on
- That's what my boss insists on
- That's what the vendor provides
- That's what my web host provides
- I really love language X, but I need this *one* library that's only
  available on language Y, so I'm stuck


I stuck with Python 1.5 for seven or eight years, and didn't migrate to
Python 2 until 2.3. Why? Because that's what came standard on my Linux
distro of choice.



--
Steven
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Maciej Fijalkowski]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM,   wrote:
>
> Quoting Lennart Regebro :
>
>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
>>>
>>> Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
>>> prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
>>> an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.
>>
>>
>> Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
>> staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
>> increase because an end is announced or reached.
>
>
> I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
> been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).
>

I'm stuck because I can't tell my users "oh, we didn't improve pypy
for the last year/6 months/3 months, because we were busy upgrading
sources you'll never see to python 3"

Cheers,
fijal
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Lennart Regebro]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Lennart Regebro  wrote:
> That's the hangup IMO. Ending Python 2.7 will make no difference there
> either good or bad, I think. We need to find other ways of improving
> adoption.

And to be clear: I am therefore not arguing *not* to end it. I just
don't think that doing so will increase Python 3 adoption. I think
that's a red herring.

I have little opinion on whether to announce an official end or not,
nor when. I think the burden of maintaining many branches is a much
better argument, and that it therefore probably should be decided by
the maintainers.

//Lennart
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[Python-Dev] Updates to PEP 1 (PEP process meta-PEP)

[Nick Coghlan]

I just pushed two modifications to PEP 1, both triggered by the
in-progress packaging PEP updates (see diff at
http://hg.python.org/peps/rev/0a8e456973ed).

The first change is the one I raised at the language summit, allowing
pronouncement on PEPs that don't immediately affect the language
definition or the standard library to occur on a list other than
python-dev. This is done by giving the "Discussions-To" header a bit
more force.

The other change is closely related, but wasn't specifically discussed
at the language summit (I only noticed the need for it when making the
edits for the change above). This second change was to adjust the
wording to make the "Python-Version" header optional for Standards
track PEPs that don't directly affect the language reference or
standard library.

In effect, the new rule is that a Standards track PEP with a specific
Python-Version set still has to be discussed and accepted or rejected
on python-dev. It's only non-version-specific interoperability
standards (like the packaging PEPs) that are fair game for another
list.

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan   |   ncogh...@gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stefan Behnel]

Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:12:
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM,   wrote:
>> Quoting Lennart Regebro:
>>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
 Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
 prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
 an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.
>>>
>>> Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
>>> staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
>>> increase because an end is announced or reached.
>>
>> I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
>> been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).
> 
> I'm stuck because I can't tell my users "oh, we didn't improve pypy
> for the last year/6 months/3 months, because we were busy upgrading
> sources you'll never see to python 3"

Why not? It's not like many people *see* PyPy's sources ever in their life,
but my guess is that most of your users will eventually end up *using*
those upgraded sources anyway. So those upgrades will also be an
improvement for most of them.

Stefan


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Maciej Fijalkowski]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Stefan Behnel  wrote:
> Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:12:
>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM,   wrote:
>>> Quoting Lennart Regebro:
 On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
> Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
> prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
> an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.

 Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
 staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
 increase because an end is announced or reached.
>>>
>>> I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
>>> been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).
>>
>> I'm stuck because I can't tell my users "oh, we didn't improve pypy
>> for the last year/6 months/3 months, because we were busy upgrading
>> sources you'll never see to python 3"
>
> Why not? It's not like many people *see* PyPy's sources ever in their life,
> but my guess is that most of your users will eventually end up *using*
> those upgraded sources anyway. So those upgrades will also be an
> improvement for most of them.
>
> Stefan

Some of them, maybe.

Most people absolutely don't care. Most of my users are people who
want this 10% speed improvement rather than sources upgraded to a
different, supposedly better, language.

Cheers,
fijal
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stefan Behnel]

Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:37:
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote:
>> Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:12:
>>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM,   wrote:
 Quoting Lennart Regebro:
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
>> Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
>> prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
>> an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.
>
> Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
> staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
> increase because an end is announced or reached.

 I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
 been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).
>>>
>>> I'm stuck because I can't tell my users "oh, we didn't improve pypy
>>> for the last year/6 months/3 months, because we were busy upgrading
>>> sources you'll never see to python 3"
>>
>> Why not? It's not like many people *see* PyPy's sources ever in their life,
>> but my guess is that most of your users will eventually end up *using*
>> those upgraded sources anyway. So those upgrades will also be an
>> improvement for most of them.
> 
> Some of them, maybe.
> 
> Most people absolutely don't care. Most of my users are people who
> want this 10% speed improvement rather than sources upgraded to a
> different, supposedly better, language.

My guess is that they don't care because they don't have a choice anyway.
If they want to use PyPy (because they care about this 10% speedup), then
they have to stick to Python 2 as of now. Extrapolating from that that they
wouldn't prefer writing Python 3 code if they could is a fallacy.

Stefan


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Maciej Fijalkowski]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Stefan Behnel  wrote:
> Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:37:
>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote:
>>> Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:12:
 On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM,   wrote:
> Quoting Lennart Regebro:
>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
>>> Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
>>> prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
>>> an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.
>>
>> Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
>> staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
>> increase because an end is announced or reached.
>
> I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
> been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).

 I'm stuck because I can't tell my users "oh, we didn't improve pypy
 for the last year/6 months/3 months, because we were busy upgrading
 sources you'll never see to python 3"
>>>
>>> Why not? It's not like many people *see* PyPy's sources ever in their life,
>>> but my guess is that most of your users will eventually end up *using*
>>> those upgraded sources anyway. So those upgrades will also be an
>>> improvement for most of them.
>>
>> Some of them, maybe.
>>
>> Most people absolutely don't care. Most of my users are people who
>> want this 10% speed improvement rather than sources upgraded to a
>> different, supposedly better, language.
>
> My guess is that they don't care because they don't have a choice anyway.
> If they want to use PyPy (because they care about this 10% speedup), then
> they have to stick to Python 2 as of now. Extrapolating from that that they
> wouldn't prefer writing Python 3 code if they could is a fallacy.
>
> Stefan
>

You're completely missing what I said. I'm not arguing against
providing pypy3k and we're working on it. Then users can choose. I'm
arguing against me porting PyPy *source* to python3, which does not
affect the language they users are using. Those are two drastically
different scenarios. One is visible to users (and our plan is to
support both pypy and pypy3k for the forseeable future) and the other
is what developers see with really 0 visibility to the user.

Cheers,
fijal
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stefan Behnel]

Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:45:
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote:
>> Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:37:
>>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote:
 Maciej Fijalkowski, 07.04.2013 10:12:
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM,   wrote:
>> Quoting Lennart Regebro:
>>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 7:11 AM,   wrote:
 Wrt. to the 3.x migration rate: I think this is a self-fulfilling
 prophecy. Migration rate will certainly increase once we announce
 an end of 2.7, and then again when the end is actually reached.
>>>
>>> Well... People are in general *stuck* on Python 2. They are not
>>> staying because they want to. So I'm not so sure migration rate will
>>> increase because an end is announced or reached.
>>
>> I assume you say that because people rely on libraries that haven't
>> been ported (correct me if there are other reasons to be stuck).
>
> I'm stuck because I can't tell my users "oh, we didn't improve pypy
> for the last year/6 months/3 months, because we were busy upgrading
> sources you'll never see to python 3"

 Why not? It's not like many people *see* PyPy's sources ever in their life,
 but my guess is that most of your users will eventually end up *using*
 those upgraded sources anyway. So those upgrades will also be an
 improvement for most of them.
>>>
>>> Some of them, maybe.
>>>
>>> Most people absolutely don't care. Most of my users are people who
>>> want this 10% speed improvement rather than sources upgraded to a
>>> different, supposedly better, language.
>>
>> My guess is that they don't care because they don't have a choice anyway.
>> If they want to use PyPy (because they care about this 10% speedup), then
>> they have to stick to Python 2 as of now. Extrapolating from that that they
>> wouldn't prefer writing Python 3 code if they could is a fallacy.
> 
> You're completely missing what I said. I'm not arguing against
> providing pypy3k and we're working on it. Then users can choose. I'm
> arguing against me porting PyPy *source* to python3, which does not
> affect the language they users are using. Those are two drastically
> different scenarios. One is visible to users (and our plan is to
> support both pypy and pypy3k for the forseeable future) and the other
> is what developers see with really 0 visibility to the user.

Then I don't see why that code would have to be changed at all. AFAIK, most
of PyPy isn't even written in (real) Python but in RPython, which is
essentially "the subset of Python 2.x that PyPy can translate statically".
Unless you deliberately and arbitrarily want to change RPython to be "the
subset of Python 3.x that PyPy can translate statically", the eventual
death of Python 2 shouldn't affect that code.

Stefan


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Nick Coghlan]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
> Or, if they have paid support from a vendor like Red Hat, hassle the vendor
> for a fix. Speaking of 2.3, as I understand it Red Hat still offer paid
> support for 2.3, which won't expire for a few more years, and security fixes
> only for some years beyond that.
>
> [By memory, which may not be entirely accurate.]

Correct, the system Python in RHEL 4 is 2.3 and that is still a
supported platform if you pay for the Extended Lifecycle Support
(until early next year you can still get extended support for RHEL
*3*, and I believe the system Python in that is 2.2). RHEL 5 ships
with 2.4 and RHEL 6 with 2.6 and those are both still in their regular
support period. The system Python version in the upcoming RHEL 7
release hasn't been formally announced yet, but it doesn't take a
genius to figure out what it is going to be when the system Python in
Fedora is currently still Python 2.7. I'll also note that regular
support for RHEL 6 doesn't end until 2020, and extended support in
2023, so even Python *2.6* should have commercial support available
for another decade, let alone 2.7.

These supported versions are also (or will also be) available for free
through CentOS, ScientificLinux and other Red Hat derivatives.

It actually isn't the bug fixes which I consider particularly
important in 2.7 - it's the build fixes (including the
cross-compilation support). As the IDLE team ramp up their efforts,
there may also be benefit in getting updated versions of IDLE into the
hands of beginners (remember, a huge amount of training is enterprise
focused, which isn't likely to switch to 3.x until after Red Hat does,
and that migration has barely started on the Fedora side - having the
installer and package management system written in Python means that
migration is likely to open up some fairly major cans of worms).

Python 2.7 is a mature, stable platform for software development.
Python 3.3 is *better* in most respects, but if you've already worked
around (or aren't affected by) the text model issues in 2.x, then most
of the cool features in 3.x are available as backported modules on
PyPI.

With the lifting of the language moratorium. 3.3 has taken us further
down the "carrot" path for migration (adding the more efficient
Unicode representation, the "yield from" notation, more memory
efficient objects, import system enhancements and the improved
exception hierarchy to the pre-existing carrot that is chained
exceptions).

3.4 will likely add even more carrots, as we take further advantage of
the cleaner code base that was gained in the 3.x migration.

I think it's quite reasonable for individual committers to decide how
much we want to worry about Python 2.7. I know I've fixed some bugs in
3.x and then left the issue open as still applicable to 2.7 (usually
because the bug affected some part of the code that changed in the
transition, so the backport isn't straightforward). I consider that a
reasonable thing for me, or any other committer, to do: leave issues
open as applicable to 2.7 rather than doing the backport immediately.
If someone else cares enough to backport it, great, otherwise the
issue is still there to indicate that the problem still exists in 2.7.

Regards,
Nick.

--
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Alfredo Solano Martínez]

I think the question average python users have is "What's in it for me?".
While the guts have undergone lots of changes, from the outside it is mostly
perceived as the unicode-by-default and the print function. As per Bret's talk
at pycon [1], speed is roughly the same, which is great, considering all the
new stuff, but not a compelling reason to change for Joe Programmer. Joe will
probably consider PyPy because "moar speez" is an easy sell, though.

In a way, python3 is victim of the success of python2. Inertia is a powerful
force, and honestly, most of the time python2 just works (easy to write, easy
to modify, fast enough). Maybe it's just a marketing problem, and more
examples of "things you can only do with python3" are needed. Or maybe for all
the good changes already there, it still needs a killer feature, i.e. the
proverbial elevator pitch, that sets it apart from its older brother.

Alfredo

[1] http://pyvideo.org/video/1730/python-33-trust-me-its-better-than-27
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Tshepang Lekhonkhobe]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Maciej Fijalkowski  wrote:
> For what is worth, we'll maintain the stdlib part of 2.7 past 2 years.

You mean 2 years beyond 2015 (assuming that will be end-of-bugfix date)?

PS: I only noticed you were talking about PyPy because I recognized
your name; others won't.
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:11:03 +1000
Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
> On 07/04/13 17:52, Maciej Fijalkowski wrote:
> > If they never migrate on the premises of python 3 being a better
> > language what does it say about python 3?
> 
> Very little. People stick with languages for all sorts of reasons,
> including:
> 
> - It's what I know
> - I don't like change
> - That's what the client insists on
> - That's what my boss insists on
> - That's what the vendor provides
> - That's what my web host provides
> - I really love language X, but I need this *one* library that's only
>available on language Y, so I'm stuck

- It takes time to migrate a codebase.

Regards

Antoine.


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Martin v. Löwis]

Am 07.04.13 00:37, schrieb Benjamin Peterson:
> What I like about 6 months is that its short enough, so we don't have
> feel bad about not taking a certain change; it can just be pushed to
> the next no-too-far-away release. A year is quite a while to wait for
> a fix to be released. It's also a nice timeframe for some
> distributions (looking at you, Ubuntu).

This means that we will see two-digit micro-releases, right (assuming
that there will be a few security releases)?

Regards,
Martin


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Martin v. Löwis]

Am 07.04.13 11:46, schrieb Tshepang Lekhonkhobe:
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Maciej Fijalkowski  wrote:
>> For what is worth, we'll maintain the stdlib part of 2.7 past 2 years.
> 
> You mean 2 years beyond 2015 (assuming that will be end-of-bugfix date)?

No, I think he means "beyond 2 years from now", i.e. "beyond 2015", i.e.
"after python-dev stops maintaining it", without any specific end
of that support.

Regards,
Martin


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Skip Montanaro]

I started writing this last night before the flurry of messages which
arrived overnight.  I thought originally, "Oh, Skip, you're being too
harsh."  But now I'm not so sure.  I think you are approaching the
issue of 2.7's EOL incorrectly. Of those discussing the end of Python
2.7, how many of you still use it in your day-to-day work? Have any of
you yet to move to Python 3?  It sounds like many people at PyCon are
still 2.x users.

Where I work (a trading firm that uses Python as just one of many
different pieces of technology, not a company where Python is the core
technology upon which the firm is based) we are only just now
migrating from 2.4 to 2.7. I can't imagine we'll have migrated to
Python 3 in two years.  It's not like we haven't seen this coming, but
you can only justify moving so fast with technology that already
works, especially if, like Python, you use it with lots of other
packages (most/all of which themselves have to be ported to Python 3)
and in-house software.

I think the discussion should focus on who's left on 2.x and why, not,
"yeah, releases every six months for the next couple years ought to do
it."

Just my 2¢.

Skip
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Benjamin Peterson]

2013/4/7 "Martin v. Löwis" :
> Am 07.04.13 00:37, schrieb Benjamin Peterson:
>> What I like about 6 months is that its short enough, so we don't have
>> feel bad about not taking a certain change; it can just be pushed to
>> the next no-too-far-away release. A year is quite a while to wait for
>> a fix to be released. It's also a nice timeframe for some
>> distributions (looking at you, Ubuntu).
>
> This means that we will see two-digit micro-releases, right (assuming
> that there will be a few security releases)?

With the current proposal, 2.7.8 in 2015 would be the last non-security release.



--
Regards,
Benjamin
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Benjamin Peterson]

2013/4/7 Skip Montanaro :
> I started writing this last night before the flurry of messages which
> arrived overnight.  I thought originally, "Oh, Skip, you're being too
> harsh."  But now I'm not so sure.  I think you are approaching the
> issue of 2.7's EOL incorrectly. Of those discussing the end of Python
> 2.7, how many of you still use it in your day-to-day work? Have any of
> you yet to move to Python 3?  It sounds like many people at PyCon are
> still 2.x users.
>
> Where I work (a trading firm that uses Python as just one of many
> different pieces of technology, not a company where Python is the core
> technology upon which the firm is based) we are only just now
> migrating from 2.4 to 2.7. I can't imagine we'll have migrated to
> Python 3 in two years.  It's not like we haven't seen this coming, but
> you can only justify moving so fast with technology that already
> works, especially if, like Python, you use it with lots of other
> packages (most/all of which themselves have to be ported to Python 3)
> and in-house software.
>
> I think the discussion should focus on who's left on 2.x and why, not,
> "yeah, releases every six months for the next couple years ought to do
> it."

This thread is about setting CPython release schedules, so that the
discussion focuses on that is unavoidable. :)

I don't think the bug fix releases of CPython are critically important
to the life of a Python version. Every 2.x version has survived much
longer than Python-dev has done bugfixes on it. As has been noted on
this thread, there will be commercial and apparently PyPy support for
2.7 long after cpython stops bug fixing it.


--
Regards,
Benjamin
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Christian Tismer]

On 07.04.13 03:54, Raymond Hettinger wrote:


On Apr 6, 2013, at 2:02 PM, Benjamin Peterson > wrote:



we need to talk about how many more 2.7 releases there are
going to be. At the release of 2.7.0, I thought we promised 5 years of
bugfix maintenance, but my memory may be fuddled.


I don't we need to make any "promises" beyond 5 years,
but I also think it is likely the 2.7 will end-up being a
long-term maintenance version of Python.

At this year's Pycon keynote, I surveyed the crowd (approx 2500 people)
and all almost everyone indicated that they had tried out Python 3.x
and almost no one was using it in production or writing code for it.
That indicates that Python 2.7 will continue to be important for a good
while.

In addition,  the other implementations of Python (Jython, PyPy, GAE,
and IronPython) are all at or nearly at Python 2.7.   So, continued
support will be needed for their users as well.

After 2.7.4, I expect that the pace of real bug fixes will slow down,
but that we'll continue to improve docs, add docstrings, update IDLE, etc.

IMO, it is premature to utter the phrase "the end of 2.7".
Better to say, "2.7 is stable and is expected to only have minor updates".

Future point releases probably ought to occur "on their own schedule"
whenever there are a sufficient number of changes to warrant a release,
or an important security fix, or whenever the release managers have time.



Raimond, although I think you are right, I don't think this statement helps
Python to move forward. Your vision is realistic, nevertheless I
think it is important to tell everybody that 2013 is the year to move
to Python 3.

If enough people like you, Alex, Dabeaz, etc are claiming that loudly 
enough, it will

eventually happen!

cheers - chris

--
Christian Tismer :^)   
Software Consulting  : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 121 :*Starship* http://starship.python.net/
14482 Potsdam: PGP key -> http://pgp.uni-mainz.de
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Christian Tismer]

Hi Skip,

On 07.04.13 14:10, Skip Montanaro wrote:

I started writing this last night before the flurry of messages which
arrived overnight.  I thought originally, "Oh, Skip, you're being too
harsh."  But now I'm not so sure.  I think you are approaching the
issue of 2.7's EOL incorrectly. Of those discussing the end of Python
2.7, how many of you still use it in your day-to-day work? Have any of
you yet to move to Python 3?  It sounds like many people at PyCon are
still 2.x users.

Where I work (a trading firm that uses Python as just one of many
different pieces of technology, not a company where Python is the core
technology upon which the firm is based) we are only just now
migrating from 2.4 to 2.7. I can't imagine we'll have migrated to
Python 3 in two years.  It's not like we haven't seen this coming, but
you can only justify moving so fast with technology that already
works, especially if, like Python, you use it with lots of other
packages (most/all of which themselves have to be ported to Python 3)
and in-house software.

I think the discussion should focus on who's left on 2.x and why, not,
"yeah, releases every six months for the next couple years ought to do
it."



when I read this, I was slightly shocked. You know what?
"""
We are pleased to announce the release of*Python 2.4, final*on November 
30, 2004.

"""

I know that companies try to save (time? money?) something by not upgrading
software, and this is extremely annoying.

In my own project, which is for a customer, I just managed to do the 
complete transition

from Python 2.7 to 3.3.
Well, this was relatively simple because there is just my boss to be 
convinced,

and myself, because honestly the 3.3 support is still not as good as needed.
But I think every employee (including you) can quite easily put some 
pressure

on his company by claiming that Python 2.x is a dead end, and everybody is
about to move on to 3.x.
This does not have to be true, I just recognize that by claiming it and 
doing it
with your projects, the movement becomes a reality. Just say that we all 
need to

move on and cannot care about companies that ignore this necessity.

I agree it is hard to push things forward, when certain tools are just 
supporting
2.x. My way to get over this is ranting, and porting some things, and 
claiming

it was a cake walk. A lie, but it helped.

my 2.01 cent -- chris

--
Christian Tismer :^)   
Software Consulting  : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Gregory P. Smith]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 6:53 AM, Christian Tismer wrote:

>  Hi Skip,
>
>
> On 07.04.13 14:10, Skip Montanaro wrote:
>
> I started writing this last night before the flurry of messages which
> arrived overnight.  I thought originally, "Oh, Skip, you're being too
> harsh."  But now I'm not so sure.  I think you are approaching the
> issue of 2.7's EOL incorrectly. Of those discussing the end of Python
> 2.7, how many of you still use it in your day-to-day work? Have any of
> you yet to move to Python 3?  It sounds like many people at PyCon are
> still 2.x users.
>
> Where I work (a trading firm that uses Python as just one of many
> different pieces of technology, not a company where Python is the core
> technology upon which the firm is based) we are only just now
> migrating from 2.4 to 2.7. I can't imagine we'll have migrated to
> Python 3 in two years.  It's not like we haven't seen this coming, but
> you can only justify moving so fast with technology that already
> works, especially if, like Python, you use it with lots of other
> packages (most/all of which themselves have to be ported to Python 3)
> and in-house software.
>
> I think the discussion should focus on who's left on 2.x and why, not,
> "yeah, releases every six months for the next couple years ought to do
> it."
>
>
>
> when I read this, I was slightly shocked. You know what?
> """
> We are pleased to announce the release of *Python 2.4, final* on November
> 30, 2004.
> """
>
> I know that companies try to save (time? money?) something by not upgrading
> software, and this is extremely annoying.
>

You're not looking at it from the users perspective.  They see:

"we are pleased to announce that RHEL 4 will be supported until the year
3325"

and continue to use everything that it ships with and only that.  its their
own loss for not investing in maintaining infrastructure of their own
rather than investing in a support contract from their vendor but it is a
valid choice none the less.  it has nothing to do with what python-dev
chooses to do release wise.

I think this thread has already settled the question that Benjamin set out
to ask: it doesn't matter when we stop issuing bug fix releases of 2.7,
users will exist long enough for even today's deniers to hate them for
using an old version.

If Benjamin wants to see bug fix releases made for two years, great!  If
not, no big deal either. We as python-dev are a bunch of volunteers and it
is up to each one of us if we'll bother to continue back porting fixes or
investigating bugs on 2.7 or not. I strongly suspect that many of us will
only continue to do so as long as 2.7 is relevant to our day jobs.

We don't need to close the 2.7 branch to commits and bug fixes.  Ever.  But
most of us will stop caring about making changes to it at some point.  For
me that point is after 3.4.

my 3 cents,
-gps
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Georg Brandl]

Am 07.04.2013 14:10, schrieb Skip Montanaro:
> I started writing this last night before the flurry of messages which
> arrived overnight.  I thought originally, "Oh, Skip, you're being too
> harsh."  But now I'm not so sure.  I think you are approaching the
> issue of 2.7's EOL incorrectly. Of those discussing the end of Python
> 2.7, how many of you still use it in your day-to-day work? Have any of
> you yet to move to Python 3?  It sounds like many people at PyCon are
> still 2.x users.
> 
> Where I work (a trading firm that uses Python as just one of many
> different pieces of technology, not a company where Python is the core
> technology upon which the firm is based) we are only just now
> migrating from 2.4 to 2.7. I can't imagine we'll have migrated to
> Python 3 in two years.

You won't have to.  You've been using 2.4 for 4.5 years after its last
maintenance release (which was in December 2008), so by analogy you'll
have until 2019 to migrate away from Python 2.7.

<0.5wink>
Georg

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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Skip Montanaro writes:

 > It sounds like many people at PyCon are still 2.x users.

I suspect we're all still 2.x users at some level.

But the question is not "where are the users?"  It's "where do the
development resources come from?"  Pretty clearly, the python-dev
crowd has voted with their keyboards.  You don't see a lot of
complaints from committers about this policy.  I gather the general
feeling is that at this point supporting Python 2.x is just work that
somebody else benefits from.

2.x's EOL was discussed in the past (the thread about "why no 2.8?"),
and what we observe is nobody coming forward to maintain Python 2 for
the fun of it.  People not only work on Python 3 for the fun of it,
but they even port packages to Python 3 for the fun of it![1]

 > Where I work [...] it's not like we haven't seen this coming, but
 > you can only justify moving so fast with technology that already
 > works,

But by the same token, you should be able to see quite a ways in
advance when it's going to stop working, and then you can decide how
you want to pay for what you'd been getting for free.

As far as I can see, this is a win-win situation for Python 2 users.
Stick with Python 2, which you get for free and has evolved into a
robust powerful language embedded in a very rich ecosystem of add-on
packages.  It's open source, so you can maintain it yourself if
necessary -- but it mostly *won't* be necessary.  Or migrate to Python
3, which you get for free, is a better language, and whose ecosystem
is advancing at a good clip.  And it is much more fun to work with in
many ways.


Sorry-no-free-ponies-here-ly y'rs,


Footnotes: 
[1]  FVO "fun" including "people who have done me a good turn will be
happy to see this done".

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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[R. David Murray]

On Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:25:12 +0900, "Stephen J. Turnbull"  
wrote:
> 2.x's EOL was discussed in the past (the thread about "why no 2.8?"),
> and what we observe is nobody coming forward to maintain Python 2 for
> the fun of it.  People not only work on Python 3 for the fun of it,
> but they even port packages to Python 3 for the fun of it![1]

Indeed.  As one of the people who regularly makes commits to Python,
I can say that not applying bug fixes to 2.7 will be a big relief.
Having to patch 2.7 roughly doubles the time it takes to commit a fix
(much more if the fix doesn't apply cleanly), and I find myself more and
more likely to say "well, it's been that way in Python2 for a long while,
fixing it there is more likely to break things than it is to improve
things, so let's not backport".  Or, as gps said, just leaving the issue
open to see if anyone else is willing to put in the effort to backport it.

I am likely to continue to consider backporting fixes (I mostly do stdlib
stuff) until Benjamin stops issuing bugfix releases, but the bar for a
fix getting backported will continue to rise, and by the time of 3.4 my
behavior may well be almost indistinguishable from those who are deciding
to stop backporting fixes at the 3.4 boundary :)

As others have pointed out, we are not talking about the end of 2.7,
just of the end of python-dev doing 2.7 bugfix releases.  2.7 will live
on longer than even 2.3/2.4 did, I expect, and I personally have no
problem with that.

My primary customers *are* using Python3, by the way.  But I and they
still use Python2 for lots of things, and will probably do so for a while
yet.  So I can also speak from a customer/consultant perspective and say
that I have no problem with the impending end of 2.7 bugfix releases.
In fact (except for IDLE, which I don't use myself but I really want to
see improved), I would be fine if this *had* been the last 2.7 bugfix
release :)

--David
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Martin v. Löwis]

Am 07.04.13 16:58, schrieb Gregory P. Smith:
> We don't need to close the 2.7 branch to commits and bug fixes.  Ever.

I wouldn't want this to happen, actually. People making changes to the
2.7 branch will want to see them released some day. The expectation is
on the release people to actually make the releases. I personally want
to see a fixed date when I can stop making Windows releases of 2.7, and
uninstall Visual Studio 2008.

So when we (Benjamin specifically) announce an end to bug fixing 2.7,
I'd really like to see the branch closed for bug fixing. It may well
be that another clone of cpython is established that gets bugs fixed
(and perhaps even new features), but I would rather that branch not
be hg.python.org/cpython.

Regards,
Martin

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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stefan Behnel]

Christian Tismer, 07.04.2013 15:53:
> But I think every employee (including you) can quite easily put some pressure
> on his company by claiming that Python 2.x is a dead end, and everybody is
> about to move on to 3.x.
> This does not have to be true, I just recognize that by claiming it and 
> doing it with your projects, the movement becomes a reality. Just say
> that we all need to move on and cannot care about companies that ignore
> this necessity.
> 
> I agree it is hard to push things forward, when certain tools are just 
> supporting 2.x. My way to get over this is ranting, and porting some
> things, and claiming it was a cake walk. A lie, but it helped.

+1, although I'd rather call it a self-fulfilling prophecy than a lie.

Stefan


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Guido van Rossum]

I have spent many years  in industry working for large companies that
have big, successful internal Python code bases, with dependencies on
large numbers of external packages. From talking about colleagues
about migrating to new language versions, several issues come forward.
They all conspire to make it hard to move forward, but not impossible.

- A single external package that doesn't yet support the new version
can block migration until it has been ported or been replaced by
something else.

- Many third party packages change their API as they move forward
(sometimes they are forced by changes in the language). This means
trouble in the backwards compatibility department.

- A migration takes a lot of effort. You have to put several engineers
on it full-time who could otherwise be developing new features; and it
disturbs the development activities of many other engineers, who will
be asked to fix tests, decide whether something is still used, and so
on.

- There are probably parts of the codebase that depend extensively on
some feature that doesn't work in the new version, e.g. str/unicode
equivalency. Yes, that code is probably buggy, but it is heavily used,
and rewriting it means changing interfaces between different
components, which in turn requires more rewrites.

- There are probably different departments within the company that
move at different speeds. It is extremely difficult to get everyone to
switch at the same time. So you have to come up with some kind of
gradual transition plan, which will probably make the effort even more
work, by requiring backwards compatibility for some internal
interfaces.

- Even if everything goes extremely smoothly, you can still count on
some interruption of production -- outages, performance degradations,
all the things that end users notice and gripe about. The prospect of
this makes managers *very* uncomfortable.

But, despite all this, migrations happen all the time, and I am sure
that Python 3 will prevail as time progresses. For many *users*,
Python 3 may be a distraction. But for most *developers*, maintaining
2.7 is a distraction. By and large, users of 2.7 don't need new
features, they just need it to keep working. And it does, of course.
(At the risk of a flawed analogy: Windows XP is still the best version
of Windows for hardware built when XP was current.)

But perhaps we could change the focus for 2.7 development a bit:
instead of fixing bugs (or bickering about whether something is a bug
fix or a new feature) we could limit changes to ensuring that it works
on newer platforms. Martin mentioned that building 2.7 for Windows
with the same toolchain that was used for the 2.7.0 release is getting
more and more problematic. I'm not sure, but I could imagine similar
problems for future versions of OS X and even Linux (though the Linux
distributions typically take care of issues themselves).

There's not much of a point in fixing bugs that always existed in 2.7,
since must 2.7 users are by now used to working around these. However,
I do see a point in supporting builds targeting newer OS versions.
This won't be much of a relief for Martin, but it might be one of the
best ways to interpret "support" of Python 2.7 for the next several
years. I would also support having a 3rd party doing this and sell the
binaries for a small fee (ActiveState started out this way) -- but it
would still behoove us to have the necessary build files in the core
repo.

Some final words: if any of the alternate Python implementations
(IronPython, Jython, PyPy, even Cython) are feeling down on Python 3
because they do not have enough volunteers to help with the port (even
though at least for IronPython and Jython, the new str/bytes model is
much more suitable than the old), they should apply to the PSF for
funding. I believe PyPy is already in the process of doing so.

--
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[R. David Murray]

On Sun, 07 Apr 2013 11:48:28 -0400, "R. David Murray"  
wrote:
> (much more if the fix doesn't apply cleanly), and I find myself more and
> more likely to say "well, it's been that way in Python2 for a long while,
> fixing it there is more likely to break things than it is to improve
> things, so let's not backport".  Or, as gps said, just leaving the issue

Having sent this, I noticed that it is actually a significant point that
no one else has raised out, and is worth emphasising.

When we fix bugs, there is always a backward compatibility estimation
that goes into the fix, and whether to even make the fix in the bug fix
release: what are the chances that fixing this bug will break currently
working code, versus the chances that currently broken code will start
working correctly?  If the chance of breakage outweighs the good done,
we don't apply the fix to the maintenance release.

The longer that a maintenance release is in the field, the higher
the probability that fixing a bug will break existing working code.
So even *without* a set maintenance end date, the number of bug fixes
*should* decline over time.

Five years is a long time.  By that point, even regardless of any
maintenance commitment concerns, it is probably best to stop fixing
anything except security bugs *anyway*, as a service to the user
community :)

--David
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Martin v. Löwis]

> But perhaps we could change the focus for 2.7 development a bit:
> instead of fixing bugs (or bickering about whether something is a bug
> fix or a new feature) we could limit changes to ensuring that it works
> on newer platforms. Martin mentioned that building 2.7 for Windows
> with the same toolchain that was used for the 2.7.0 release is getting
> more and more problematic.

For Windows, I don't see a way to achieve this. With the current setup
of the Microsoft C runtime library, we need to continue to build with
VS 2008 "forever", in the 2.7 branch. While it would be possible to
include project files for VS 2012 (and fix the few places where the code
doesn't work on VS 2012), this wouldn't help:

If we release 2.7.5 (say) built with VS 2012 (say), then existing
third-party extension modules may break (depending how precisely they
use the CRT). Likewise, if a user choses to rebuild Python with VS 2012
themselves, they really ought to rebuild all extension modules that they
use as well. They probably won't recognize this requirement, and then
debug difficult-to-understand issues.

IOW, to update the tool chain, we would really have to call it
python28.dll (or start with a new approach of calling it
python27vs11.dll, which would create distinct universes where
each extension needs to be built for each universe).

So I believe that extension building is becoming more and more
painful on Windows for Python 2.7 as time passes (and it is already
way more painful than it is on Linux), and I see no way to do much
about that. The "stable ABI" would have been a solution, but it's
too late now for 2.7.

Regards,
Martin

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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 06, 2013, at 05:02 PM, Benjamin Peterson wrote:

>This means we need to talk about how many more 2.7 releases there are
>going to be.

I'm all for putting stakes in the ground and clearly describing the future
life of Python 2.7, rather than the current indefinite status quo.  We talked
about this at Pycon, and a final maintenance release of 2.7 when 3.4 is
released, plus a few years of security-only source-only releases after that
seems entirely reasonable.

I would like to make a definitive statement as to 2.7's EOL because I think
that will spur more people to work on porting.  Just as 3.3 makes porting
easier than 3.2, I expect that as more people see the writing on the wall, and
we've reached the Python 3 tipping point (e.g. "wos" now means "wall of
superpowers :) we'll get even more feedback on porting difficulties that can
be alleviated in 3.4.  (Example, I was against re-adding the u-prefix, but I
was wrong!)

Thankfully, after October, I won't have to worry about 2.6 any more.

-Barry
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 06, 2013, at 06:54 PM, Raymond Hettinger wrote:

>At this year's Pycon keynote, I surveyed the crowd (approx 2500 people)
>and all almost everyone indicated that they had tried out Python 3.x
>and almost no one was using it in production or writing code for it.
>That indicates that Python 2.7 will continue to be important for a good
>while.  

Now that porting has reached the top of the food chain (e.g. Twisted, Django)
I think these numbers will change.  Some from porters, but also from new
projects which can start with a clean slate and avoid endless UncodeErrors and
rafts of other problems.  This will produce downward pressure on lagging
libraries to adopt Python 3 or get left behind, and that should increase the
momentum.  Python 3 *is* being used in production, but today it's limited to
new code bases and ports where all the dependencies are already there.  Now
we're identifying key bottlenecks, such as (for us) Xapian, and places in the
language or libraries where more help is needed.  Some bottlenecks have
already been fixed (e.g. for us, dbus and OAuth, where the most popular
library is already abandoned upstream for 4 years, but there is thankfully a
great replacement that's Python 3 compatible).

I talked to someone at Pycon who was still using Python 1.5, which is probably
older than some of the people on this list ;).

-Barry
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Steven D'Aprano]

On 08/04/13 07:41, Barry Warsaw wrote:


I talked to someone at Pycon who was still using Python 1.5, which is probably
older than some of the people on this list ;).


Awesome! :-)

--
Steven
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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Barry Warsaw writes:

 > I would like to make a definitive statement as to 2.7's EOL because
 > I think that will spur more people to work on porting.

I have to agree with the people who say that it's not a major spur.
Internal support for existing Python 2.7 installations is by now quite
a bit less than a full-time job (at least the part corresponding to
what python-dev does for a version in late maintenance releases[1]).
I don't see how it makes the choice between sticking with 2.7
vs. contributing ports to 3.x more stark than it already is.

Of course it does free up core developer time, especially the release
engineers.  In maintaining 2.7 past 2015, are core developers really
doing anything that a business can't do cheaply and with maximum
social benefit?[2]

Footnotes: 
[1]  Maybe the Windows build process brings it close to that order of
magnitude, if users are building internally.  But this should be a
saleable product.

[2]  It has been proved that open source development styles *do*
provide benefits *beyond* what business can profitably provide,
because of network externalities among developers and users,
especially the ability of user-developers to contribute.  But these
benefits mostly disappear when the developer-vs-user externality
disappears because the spec is fixed, and the implementation 99.44%
corresponds to the spec.


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Re: [Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Nick Coghlan]

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:58 AM, Gregory P. Smith  wrote:
> You're not looking at it from the users perspective.  They see:
>
> "we are pleased to announce that RHEL 4 will be supported until the year
> 3325"
>
> and continue to use everything that it ships with and only that.  its their
> own loss for not investing in maintaining infrastructure of their own rather
> than investing in a support contract from their vendor but it is a valid
> choice none the less.  it has nothing to do with what python-dev chooses to
> do release wise.

Right, people pay companies like Red Hat* good money to support
ancient versions of open source software. Upstream doesn't want to do
that (because it's tedious and not at all interesting), and *they
don't have to*. If people want things that volunteers aren't
interested in providing, then they have the option to pay to get the
software they want on the platforms they want (note that in the later
parts of a supported product's life, even we don't support running
ancient versions of RHEL directly on new hardware - we only support
running it as a VM inside a supported hypervisor that supports the new
hardware).

* In case anyone in the thread isn't already aware of my multiple
perspectives on this issue, note that I work on internal tools
development for Red Hat these days.

> We don't need to close the 2.7 branch to commits and bug fixes.  Ever.  But
> most of us will stop caring about making changes to it at some point.

+1000

> For
> me that point is after 3.4.

In terms of most of the stuff I work on that isn't a new feature, it's
either obscure enough, different enough between 2.x and 3.x or close
enough to the "new feature" line that I don't really care about
getting it changed in 2.7. So for me personally, the "stop worrying
about fixing 2.7" point is mostly passed already (fixing aspects of
the 2.7 *ecosystem* is still thoroughly on my radar, but that's about
improving external tools, not CPython itself).

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan   |   ncogh...@gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 4XX: pyzaa "Improving Python ZIP Application Support"

[Daniel Holth]

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 1:26 AM, Stefan Behnel  wrote:
> Brett Cannon, 02.04.2013 19:28:
>> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Steve Dower wrote:
>>
 python -m pyzaa pack [-o path/name] [-m module.submodule:callable] [-c]
>>> [-w] [-p interpreter] directory:

ZIP the contents of directory as directory.pyz or [-w]
>>> directory.pyzw. Adds the executable flag to the archive.

 ...

-p interpreter include #!interpreter as the first line of the archive
>>>
>>> What happens when -p is omitted? I'd hope it would add the interpreter
>>> used to create the zip (or at least the major version), but that may not be
>>> ideal for some reason that I haven't thought of yet.
>>
>> Question is whether ``/usr/bin/python3.3`` is better or ``/usr/bin/env
>> python3.3``. I vote for the latter since it gets you the right thing
>> without having to care about whether the interpreter moved or is being
>> hidden by a user-installed interpreter.
>
> It can't work properly from within a virtualenv when you write
> "/usr/bin/python", so using "/usr/bin/env" instead is actually required.
>
> Stefan

Pushed as Draft PEP 441, tooling prototyped (with less than awesome
CLI) at https://bitbucket.org/dholth/pyzaa or
https://crate.io/packages/pyzaa

Thanks,

Daniel Holth
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