[Python-Dev] thinking about 2.7

[exarkun at twistedmatrix.com]

On 02:35 pm, benjamin at python.org wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>I've started plotting the release of 2.7. I'd like to try for a final
>release mid next summer. 3.2 should be released, if not at the same
>time as 2.7, within a few weeks to avoid 2.x having features which 3.x
>doesn't. If no one has problems with this, I will draft a schedule.
>
>Are we still planning to make 3.3 the main development focus and start
>the 5 years of 2.x maintenance after this release?

I hope that this decision will be delayed until the release is closer, 
so that it can be based on how 3.x adoption is progressing.
>Additionally, I'm very apprehensive about doing any kind of release
>without the buildbots running. Does anyone know when they might be up?

I was planning on replying to Antoine's earlier message about the 
buildbots after a sufficiently long silence.  I'll reply here instead.

Quite a few years of experience with a distributed team of build slave 
managers has shown me that by far the most reliable way to keep slaves 
online is to have them managed by a dedicated team.  This team doesn't 
need to be small, but since finding dedicated people can sometimes be 
challenging, I think small teams are the most likely outcome (possibly 
resulting in a team of one).  Adding more people who are only mildly 
interested doesn't help.  If, as I believe is the case with Python's 
buildbot configuration, the mildly interested people have sole control 
over certain slaves, then it is actually detrimental.

It's easy for someone to volunteer to set up a new slave.  It's even 
easy to make sure it keeps running for 6 months.  But it's not as easy 
to keep it running indefinitely.  This isn't about the software involved 
(at least not entirely).  It's about someone paying attention to whether 
the slave restarts on reboots, and about paying attention to whether the 
slave host has lots its network connection, or been decomissioned, or 
whether a system upgrade disabled the slave, or whatever other random 
administrative-like tasks are necessary to keep things running.  Casual 
volunteers generally just won't keep up with these tasks.

I suggest finding someone who's seriously interested in the quality of 
CPython and giving them the responsibility of keeping things operating 
properly.  This includes paying attention to the status of slaves, 
cajoling hardware operators into bringing hosts back online and fixing 
network issues, and finding replacements of the appropriate type 
(hardware/software platform) when a slave host is permanently lost.

I would also personally recommend that this person first (well, after 
tracking down all the slave operators and convincing them to bring their 
slaves back online) acquire shell access to all of the slave machines so 
that the owners of the slave hosts themselves no longer need to be the 
gating factor for most issues.

Jean-Paul