[Python-Dev] Re: [Python-checkins] CVS: python/dist/src/Include rangeobject.h,2.16,2.17

[Guido van Rossum]

> On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 09:31:58PM +0200, Thomas Wouters wrote:
> >Well... hrm... Iterators, generators and the type/class unification strike
> >me as more than enough reason to call it Python 3.0. Or we could ship 2.2
> 
> Agreed.  The version number being a few decimal place shifts away from
> Python 3000 is cute, too.  
> 
> --amk

Well, that's one of the reasons why I *don't* want this to be the 3.0
release.  Python 2.2 is *not* Python 3000, it is only a small step on
the way.  I also think that as soon as we announce something that
smells like Py3k to the users, there will be a huge effort to keep
Python 2.x alive.  This could cause a split in the user community of
gigantic porportions, and we'd run the risk that most of the users
would stay at Python 2.x forever.  This in turn would require us to
maintain that, probably release 2.2, 2.3 and further versions.

Despite what started this discussion, I think there will only be a
very small number of real incompatibilities between 2.1 and 2.2: one
or two new keywords (and we may have a way to reduce this to zero by
using a future or directive statement), and the object introspection
API will change.  I'm not planning on breaking classic classes in any
significant way -- that will be reserved for 2.3 or later (this is the
domain of PEP 254 which is deliberately empty so far).

Q. If an operation that failed with an AttributeError now fails with a
TypeError (or the other way around), how important is that
incompatibility?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)