[Python-Dev] Language Summit notes

[Kushal Das]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 6:38 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> To anyone who took notes at the language summit at PyCon today, even if you
> took them just for yourself, would you mind posting them here? It would be
> good to have some kind of (informal!) as soon as possible, before we
> collectively forget. You won't be held responsible for correctness.
>

The day started with introductions. Guido introduced himself as its
all his fault.

Release management discussion
==============================

Larry Hastings started the day with discussion on 3.5 release. 3.4
release was actually in 16 months. He wanted a
feedback on the next release, if we want it in a smaller release cycle
than the usual 18 months. Guido mentioned to
stay with the 18 month cycle.

Larry also asked about opinions on state of the SCM after release
candidate 1, should we create 3.5 branch and if yes
then should we allow people to commit there or not? Default should
point to 3.5.1 or 3.6 at that time? There can be another
scenario where we do not create the 3.5 branch and keep the default as
3.5 release itself. The discussion will continue
in the mailing list.

Next topic in the agenda was reports from different implementations.

PyPy
=====

Alex Gaynor gave us the current status of `PyPy <http://pypy.org>`_
project. There will be a second fund raiser on STM.
The next release is targeting 2.7.6, there were a million downloads.
While discussing about Python 3 branch he explained
that it it only 3 bugs away from shipping and it is based on 3.2.


There was a small discussion about state of CFFI for standard library
inclusion. Alex and David Beazley are supposed to
work on cleaning PLY for the same. General opinion was that it will be
hidden as a private part of the standard lib and to
be used by the language only.

Ironpython
===========

Dino Viehland talked about the status of `Ironpython
<http://ironpython.net>`_ project. Development is going on both 2.7
and 3.x
series. 2.7.4 was released last year. Many new contributors came into
the project which is a good news.

Jython
=======

The developers sent a detailed report to Micheal Foord and he will
forward it to the python-dev list. The takeaways from the mail are

* Small number of contributors is a big problem.
* 2.7.beta2 is tagged which used Java7.
* Buffer protocol work is done (foundation to Python3 support).
* They are also working on PyPi tooling.
* There is also hope for releasing CFFI backend for Jython during
Europycon sprints.


No standard library as module
==============================

When it was asked that if the other implementations want the standard
library as a separate module to be resused, all agreed as 'No'.

Packaging
===========

It was the longest discussion which made hungry developers really
hungry :) Jokes aside, Nick Coghlan gave a detailed report on the
advancement of the packaging world. Most of the development/design
discussions are now happening on the distutils sig and in pypi mailing
lists.
He managed to put the use cases a very broader audience now, so we can
except better feedbacks. On the development side, Warehouse is now
implementing all old API(s), you may want to try it out at
`https://warehouse.python.org/ <https://warehouse.python.org/>`_.

3.4 has pip included, one usecase was to help people who downloads
binary installers from our site. They can now install Django or other
projects
in wheel format.

Everyone also agreed that having the buildsystem inside the language
is a bad idea. The buildsystem should be able to do cross-version
builds.

Nick also pointed us to `http://packaging.python.org/
<http://packaging.python.org/en/latest/>`_ which is the documentation
for the whole echosystem.  We all agreed that the Python echosystem is
bigger than the core interpreter.

Glyph wants a PSF fund to a usability study on Python. There were a
few other suggestion on PSF support for tooling development.

Pyston
=======

Kevin Modzelewski explained how they are rebuilding a complete vm
which is targeted to Python, this also means too much work but one can
customize. It is targeting Python2.7 as Dropbox runs on it.


At this time of discussion Nick pointed us to
`http://speed.python.org/ <http://speed.python.org/>`_, he asked if
any of the implementations
wants to maintain it. We need more volunteers for that, target is to
have a common set of tests to benchmark different implementations.

Mypy project
=============

Jukka Lehtosalo gave a talk on his `mypy project
<http://mypy-lang.org>`_ which uses Python3 function annotations. Greg
P Smith pointed us to
a similar kind of Google project,
`https://github.com/google/pytypedecl
<https://github.com/google/pytypedecl>`_.

Notes from teaching and outreach
=================================

Selena Deckelmann talked about few pain points from teaching and outreach.

* Website is confusing. (Should I go for Python2 or Python3?)
* Packaging and installer problem
* So many different bug tracking system is also confusing
* OPW program for Cpython, this is the first year we are participating.
* Jessica McKellar will write "brand new coder tutorials".

Mercurial
===========

Matt Mackall talked about Mercurial's painpoints for Python3. It
currently works for 2.4-2.7, though he might drop 2.4 support in near
future.
It will be on 2.7 till RHEL7 is not EOL. He also said startup time is
concern for him. Only big positive point he can see in Python3 is SNI.
That feature allows you to do HTTPS to non ip based virtual hosts.
Porting whole Mercurial to Python 3 is still a very big work. They had
two gsoc students in last two years.

>From here the talks suddenly moved into mythical Python 2.8 which we
will not have, nope, sorry :) Guido wants a feature list from the
people who are asking for 2.8 to understand better. We also want to
help developers to make a single source for Python 2 and Python 3
release less painful.

Python 2.7 is alive and in good health and support will continue on the same.

Few points were talked about from 3.5, like byte formatting, unicode
surrogate, binary mode cleans for bytes etc.

Kushal