[Python-Dev] PEP 407: New release cycle and introducing long-term support versions

[Paul Moore]

On 18 January 2012 07:46, Georg Brandl <g.brandl at gmx.net> wrote:
>> But I am dubious that releases that are obsolete in 6 months and lack
>> 3rd party support will see much production use.
>
> Whether people would use the releases is probably something that only
> they can tell us -- that's why a community survey is mentioned in the
> PEP.

The class of people who we need to consider carefully is those who
want to use the latest release, but are limited by the need for other
parties to release stuff that works with that release (usually, this
means Windows binaries of extensions, or platform vendor packaged
releases of modules/packages). For them, if the other parties focus on
LTS releases (as is possible, certainly) the release cycle became
slower, going from 18 months to 24.

> Not sure what you mean by lacking 3rd party support.

I take it as meaning that the people who release Windows binaries on
PyPI, and vendors who package up PyPI distributions in their own
distribution format. Lacking support in the sense that these people
might well decide that a 6 month cycle is too fast (too much work) and
explicitly decide to focus only on LTS releases.

Paul