[Python-Dev] 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line?

[ssteinerX@gmail.com]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 11:28 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2009, at 10:48 PM, ssteinerX at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> A better language, i.e. Python 3.x, will become better faster  
>> without dragging the 2.x series out any longer.
>
> If Python 2.7 becomes the last of the 2.x series, then I personally  
> favor back porting as many features from Python 3 as possible.  I  
> still think doing so will help people migrate to Python 3 by getting  
> their Python 2 code base as close to Python 3 as possible without  
> biting the ultimate bullet.  E.g. for me "from __future__ import  
> absolute_import, unicode_literals" in Python 2.6 has helped quite a  
> bit.

I agree as long as:
	A> 2.7 comes out as soon as possible, even if it's missing helpful  
porting features.
	B> 2.7 will get ONLY new features that make it easier to port to 3.x,  
not every feature added to 3.x or all you've done is make "Python 2.7,  
the Python 3 Version." and core developer time will continue to be  
wasted on Python 2.7 instead of moving forward.

> I also think Guido's call for feature freeze makes a lot more sense  
> when 2.7 is the EOL.  Let's give people migrating to Python 3 a nice  
> big stable target to hit.  Improving the stdlib also gives people a  
> big carrot to move.

Agreed. And specifically NOT porting every shiny new toy from Python 3  
back to 2.7 makes sure the carrots are only in the 3.x series.

> I think it's also necessary to give third party library and  
> application authors as much help as possible to provide Python 3  
> compatible software.  Putting together Python tools involves so many  
> dependencies in a fairly deep stack that even one unconverted  
> library can cause everything above it to stall on Python 2.

And that's one of the reasons my explorations into Python 3 have been  
limited to pretty much nothing.

I don't have time to do a bunch of work only to find out that the tool  
I absolutely have to have to finish a project doesn't have a Python 3  
version or has been crippled to make a Python 3 version.

BeautifulSoup, which I use every day, is one such product.  Since the  
crappy old SMGL parser's gone, BeautifulSoup uses the one that's left  
in Python 3 and it makes BeautifulSoup completely useless for my daily  
work.

That's not to say I can't fix that one particular project, but  
customers get cranky when their project is taking longer than expected  
and "Oh, I'm having to convert a lot of things to use Python 3"  
doesn't seem to improve their mood much.

Thanks,

S