Hi Harry - nice write-up, thanks! It's great to hear about the way you
guys see IronPython developing in the future.
My comment on Twitter wasn't really aimed at you - I was hoping to prod
Dino, Martin or Sri into blogging more!
One question. When IronPython 3 is started, targeting CPython 3.0, will
you actively maintain IronPython 2 and IronPython 3 in parallel?
This is what the Python developers will do for several years to come as
it will be a long time before the majority of the community has switched
over to Python 3. OF course because of the Unicode strings Python 3 is a
better fit for IronPython, but for example the library support outside
the standard library won't be there for quite a long time.
Michael
Harry Pierson wrote:
Posted to my blog @
http://devhawk.net/2008/07/17/IronPython+Post+20+Roadmap.aspx but reproduced
below for your convenience.
IronPython Post 2.0 Roadmap
Michael Foord (aka voidspace) twittered that "None of the IronPython team can get it
together to blog regularly, except @jschementi of course." While I'm not sure Jimmy
is all that prolific either, Michael's certainly right about me. I started this job at
the beginning of April, and I've only blogged twenty one times in the three and a half
months since. Worse, I've only blogged six times in the past month and a half - and half
of those have been since Michael called out my lack o' posting. My wife has blogged like
twenty five times in that same time period. I can only plead pressures of a new job plus
a two week vacation. I have been twittering a lot.
Michael was twittering in response to Todd Ogasawara's post wondering about our
Python 3.0 plans. Since we haven't been particularly transparent (my fault) I
thought I'd lay out our near and middle term plans.
First off, we're on the verge of releasing 1.1.2 (the release candidate is
available now), a service release in our 1.x branch which contains a bunch of
bug fixes we've back ported from our 2.0 work. This is our last planned release
in the 1.x branch. For those who don't know, our 1.x branch tracks CPython's
2.4 branch.
Most of our team's focus has been on 2.0 which we're on track to shipping later
this year. Our 2.0 corresponds to CPython's 2.5 branch. It's a major release
for us because of the addition of the Dynamic Language Runtime. Currently, you
can get 2.0 Beta 3, with Beta 4 scheduled for early August (we go about 6 weeks
between beta releases). If you want even fresher code than our latest release,
you can pull and build the source yourself. We went about two months without
pushing source due to some broken scripts, but they're fixed now so we're going
to try and push out code much more often than we have in the past.
For the non-Python geeks in the audience, Python is undergoing a major change.
Python 3.0 is going to break backwards compatibility with Python 2.x in number
of ways. Breaking backwards compatibility always has to be handled carefully,
so the Python community is investing quite a bit of effort to make the
transition as smooth as possible.The Python Software Foundation is currently
working on both 2.6 and 3.0 simultaneously. The idea is to have as much feature
parity between the two releases (except for the stuff being removed from 3.0)
and to provide an automatic tool to translating to the new version.
Let me be very clear (since as Todd discovered, we haven't been to date) that
once we get IronPython 2.0 out the door, we will start working towards
IronPython 3.0, which will be our version of Python 3.0. We want to take the
same stepping-stone approach that CPython is taking. So that means at a minimum
we'll do an IPy 2.1 with CPython 2.6's new language and library features,
(along with the usual bug fixing and other quality improvements we do every
cycle) before then proceeding to work on IPy 3.0.
Until we get IPy 2.0 out the door, I'm not willing to talk about specific
timelines. We're an agile project and we're going to be feature and quality
driven, full stop. There were about seven months between the release of IPy 1.0
and 1.1, however that didn't include much new Python feature work so it's not a
good comparison IMO. My gut tells me the IPy 2.1 release will take longer than
a typical minor release while the IPy 3.0 release won't take as long as a
typical major release. Note, those are guesses, not commitments.
Besides IPy 2.1 and 3.0, the other major thing we're working on is Visual
Studio integration for IronPython. Yes, there is IronPythonStudio, but that's a
VS SDK sample not a production-quality VS integration the IPy team maintains or
supports. The IntelliSense implementation is pretty flaky, the compile-oriented
project system feels pretty un-pythonic and of course we need to upgrade it to
support IPy 2.0 and the DLR (it would be nice if IronRuby could leverage our
efforts down the road). Like everything else we do in this group, we'll be
publishing the VS Integration source code up on CodePlex as early and often as
we can.
So to recap our current thinking:
* IPy 1.1.2 in RC now, shipping in several weeks assuming we don't find any
major regressions
* IPy 2.0 in beta now, shipping later this year
* IPy 2.1 supporting new CPy 2.6 features at some point after IPy 2.1,
probably longer than a typical minor release
* First release of IPy integration with VS in the same timeframe as IPy 2.1
but with alpha drops as soon as we can
* IPy 3.0 supporting new CPy 3.0 after IPy 2.1, probably shorter than a
typical major release
One last thing, as many of you know the IronRuby project supports community
contributions to the standard libraries. I wanted the IPy community to know I'm
100% committed for establishing a similar arrangement for IronPython. I've got
nothing to announce yet, but rest assured I've been spending a lot of time
talking to lawyers.
As always, if you've got opinions to share please feel free to leave me
comments below, shoot me an email, or join the IPy mailing list.
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