[Numpy-discussion] NumPy 1.20.x branch in two weeks

[Ralf Gommers]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 7:47 AM Stephan Hoyer <shoyer at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 1, 2020 at 7:47 PM Stefan van der Walt <stefanv at berkeley.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Nov 1, 2020, at 18:54, Jarrod Millman wrote:
>> > I also misunderstood the purpose of the NEP.  I assumed it was
>> > intended to encourage projects to drop old versions of Python.
>
>
It was. It is. I think the NEP is very clear on that. Honestly we should
just follow the NEP and drop 3.6 now for both NumPy and SciPy, I just am
tired of arguing for it - which the NEP should have prevented being
necessary, and I don't want to do again right now, so this will probably be
my last email on this thread.


Other
>> > people have viewed the NEP similarly:
>> > https://github.com/networkx/networkx/issues/4027
>>
>> Of all the packages, it makes sense for NumPy to behave most
>> conservatively with depreciations. The NEP suggests allowable support
>> periods, but as far as I recall does not enforce minimal support.
>>
>
It doesn't *enforce* it, but the recommendation is very clear. It would be
good to follow it.


>> Stephan Hoyer had a good recommendation on how we can clarify the NEP to
>> be easier to intuit. Stephan, shall we make an ammendment to the NEP with
>> your idea?
>>
>
> For reference, here was my proposed revision:
> https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/14086#issuecomment-649287648
>
> Specifically, rather than saying "the latest release of NumPy supports all
> versions of Python released in the 42 months before NumPy's release", it
> says "NumPy will only require versions of Python that were released more
> than 24 months ago". In practice, this works out to the same thing (at
> least given Python's old 18 month release cycle).
>
> This changes the definition of the support window (in a way that I think
> is clearer and that works better for infrequent releases), but there is
> still the question of how large that window should be for NumPy.
>

I'm not sure it's clearer, the current NEP has a nice graphic and literally
says "a project with a major or minor version release in November 2020
should support Python 3.7 and newer."). However happy to adopt it if it
makes others happy - in the end it comes down to the same thing: it's
recommended to drop Python 3.6 now.

My personal opinion is that somewhere in the range of 24-36 months would be
> appropriate.
>

+1

Cheers,
Ralf
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