[Python-Dev] Python 3.4 and Windows XP: just 45 days until EOL

[Nick Coghlan]

On 12 July 2013 13:27, Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 2:11 AM, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com>
> wrote:
> > +1. And maybe amend PEP 11 to specify "whose extended support phase does
> not expire within 6 months of release"? (I picked 6 for no particular
> reason.)
>
> Why have the specification in PEP 11 if we feel we can change the
> rules arbitrarily when we feel like it?
>

Because process PEPs are documentation of community practice, not an
inviolable constraint (e.g. PEP 1 has frequently lagged behind what we
*actually* do, and only been updated once we noticed we had drifted away
from the nominal procedures). In this case, the question of "What do we do
when a Windows version goes EOL shortly after a Python release?" hasn't
come up before, so PEP 11 has never had to take it into account.

That doesn't mean we *should* change it, it just means the option is one we
have available to us.

Fixing issue 6926 only requires setting the minimum API version to Windows
*XP*, so it isn't actually relevant to the question of whether or not to
drop support for XP (only W2k, which I thought we already dropped, but we
mustn't have bumped the minimum Windows API version at the time).

Issue 1763 looks like it could be better solved through pywin32 than
through standard library changes. It certainly doesn't appear to be worth
the cost of dropping Windows XP support.

Unless there are more compelling examples of APIs that we can't access
through Windows XP compatible interfaces, -1 on the change for 3.4.

Cheers,
Nick.

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