[Python-Dev] Python 2.7 patch levels turning two digit

[Chris Kaynor]

Not being a Python developer, I normally just lurk on Py-Dev, but I figured
I'd throw this out there for this thread:

Recent version of Maya embed Python 2.x, and the newer version of Maya (I
believe 2012 was the first version) embeds a Python 2.7 compiled with VS
2010. From my experience, most C extensions work across compiler versions,
however when they don't, it's generally a fairly difficult to debug issue -
at least unless you know what to look for in the call stacks, and have
access to the symbol files.



Chris


On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 2:07 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

> On 23.06.2014 22:20, Donald Stufft wrote:
> >
> > On Jun 23, 2014, at 3:27 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 23.06.2014 18:09, Donald Stufft wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Jun 23, 2014, at 2:09 AM, Martin v. Löwis <martin at v.loewis.de>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> * Should we make use of the potential breakage with 2.7.10
> >>>>>  to introduce a new Windows compiler version for Python 2.7 ?
> >>>>
> >>>> Assuming it is a good idea to continue producing Windows binaries
> >>>> for 2.7, I think it would be a bad idea to switch compilers. It will
> >>>> cause severe breakage of 2.7 installations, much more problematic
> >>>> than switching to two-digit version numbers.
> >>>
> >>> I agree with this, we’ve just finally started getting things to the
> point where
> >>> it makes a lot of sense for binary distributions for Windows. Breaking
> all
> >>> of them on 2.7 would be very bad.
> >
> > Err, sorry that “We” was with my pip hat on.
> >
> >>
> >> Not sure what you mean. We've had binary wininst distributions
> >> for Windows for more than a decade, and egg and msi distributions
> >> for 8 years :-)
> >
> > Nonetheless, changing the compiler will not only break pip, but every
> > automated installer tool (easy_install, buildout) that i’m aware of. The
> > blow back for binary installation is going to be huge I think.
> >
> >> But without access to the VS 2008 compiler that is needed to
> >> compile those extensions, it will become increasingly difficult
> >> for package authors to provide such binary packages, so we have to
> >> ask ourselves:
> >>
> >> What's worse: breaking old Windows binaries for Python 2.7
> >> or not having updated and new Windows binaries for Python 2.7
> >> at all in a few years ?
> >
> > At the risk of getting Guido to post his slide again, I still think the
> > solution to the old compiler is to just roll a 2.8 with minimal changes.
> > It could even be a good place to move to the ssl backport changes
> > too since they were the riskier set of changes in PEP466.
> >
> > But either way, if a compiler does change in a 2.7 release we’ll need
> > to update a lot of tooling to cope with that, so any plan to do that
> should
> > include that and a timeline for adoption of that.
>
> Sure, and we'd need to hash out possible solutions to minimize
> breakage, but first we'll have to see whether we want to consider
> this step or not.
>
>
> BTW: It's strange that I'm arguing for breaking things. I'm usually
> on the other side of such arguments :-)
>
> --
> Marc-Andre Lemburg
> eGenix.com
>
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