[Python-Dev] Release cycle question

[Nick Coghlan]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 7:51 PM, Ivano <thcberserk at me.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone.
> I'm writing to ask if Python uses a "fixed" release
> time or if it depends strongly on something else.
> In example, Blender does and since I'm diving
> into Python because I would like to extend it, I
> would like to know if my work will have a default
> lifetime or not.

Hi Ivano,

The current release cycle is documented in the developer's guide:
http://docs.python.org/devguide/devcycle.html

At this point in time, there are two official python.org releases:
Python 2.7 and 3.2

2.7 was released in July 2010 and will receive maintenance updates
until around July 2015 (as it is the final release in the 2.x series)
3.2 was released in February 2011 and will receive maintenance updates
until around August this year (but will receive further source-only
security updates until around February 2016)
3.3 is due for release in August this year.

However, those are the official support dates specifically for
python-dev. OS vendors such as Red Hat and Canonical provide support
for older versions of Python as part of their enterprise releases
(e.g. RHEL5 is still supported by Red Hat and ships with Python 2.4,
even though python-dev ended upstream security updates for 2.4 in
2009)

> By the way, Python 3 changed the game AFAIK,
> will another major change come short?

No, as noted on the development cycle page, changes on the scale of
those between Python 2 and Python 3 are not expected any time in the
near future. I'd personally be surprised if anything like that
transition happened again within the next decade.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia