[Python-Dev] Bring new features to older python versions

[Michael Foord]

On 10/10/2011 21:21, Giampaolo Rodolà wrote:
> Thanks everybody for your feedback.
> I created a gcode project here:
> http://code.google.com/p/pycompat/
>
> 2011/10/8 Antoine Pitrou<solipsis at pitrou.net>:
>> There's also some stuff there that is coded in C, or that will rely on
>> some functionality of the core interpreter that is not easily
>> emulated on previous versions. But I suppose you'll find that out by
>> yourself.
> Yep, I'm still not sure what to do about this.
> I guess I'll just ignore that stuff in all those cases where rewriting
> it in python is too much effort.
>
> Toshio Kuratomi<a.badger at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> I have a need to support a small amount of code as far back as python-2.3
>> I don't suppose you're interested in that as well? ;-)
> I'm still not sure; 2.3 version is way too old (it doesn't even have
> decorators).
> It might make sense only in case the lib gets widely used, which I doubt.
> Personally, at some point I deliberately dropped support for 2.3 from
> all of my code/lib, mainly because I couldn't use decorators. so I
> don't have a real need to do this.

Yes, rewriting code from Python 2.7 to support Python 2.3 
(pre-decorators) is a real nuisance. In my projects I'm currently 
supporting Python 2.4+. I'll probably drop support for Python 2.4 soon 
which will allow for the use of the with statement.

>
> 2011/10/9 Éric Araujo<merwok at netwok.org>:
>> The issues I foresee with your lib are more technical: First, it looks
>> like a big bag of backported modules, classes and functions without
>> defined criterion for inclusion (“cool new stuff”?).
> I'd say the criterion for inclusion is putting in everything which can
> be (re)written in python 2.4, such as any, all,
> collections.defaultdict and property setters/deleters (2.6).
> Pretty much all the stuff written in C would be left out, maybe with
> the exception of functools module which is important (for me at
> least), in which case I might try to rewrite it in pure Python.
> I'm sharing your same doubts though.
> Maybe this isn't worth the effort in the first place.
> I'll try to write some more code and see whether this is a good
> candidate for a "public module".
> If not I'll just get back to use it as an internal "private" module.
>
> 2011/10/9 Éric Araujo<merwok at netwok.org>:
>> keep on lumping new things until Python 3.4?  3.8?  Won’t that become
>> unmanageable (boring/huge/hard)?
> I don't think it makes sense to go over than 3.2 version.
> Folks which are forced to use python 2.4 are already avoing to use 2.6
> and 2.7 features, let alone 3.X only features.
> Plus, python 3.2 was already the latest 3.X version which still had
> something in common with 2.7.

However, if you can include Python 3.2+ features then projects that also 
support Python 3 can still use new features without having to worry 
about compatibility (it solves the same problem).

All the best,

Michael Foord

>
>
> --- Giampaolo
> http://code.google.com/p/pyftpdlib/
> http://code.google.com/p/psutil/
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