[Python-Dev] Where is our official policy of what platforms we do support?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Am 14.05.14 16:28, schrieb Barry Warsaw:
> On May 14, 2014, at 02:20 PM, Brett Cannon wrote:
> 
>> Do we want an official policy written down in a PEP (yes, I can write it)?
>> Should I keep closing these patches and saying that we are not adding
>> support for new operating systems and be hand-wavy about it?
> 
> Yes, I think a PEP describing both policy and implementation (i.e. which
> platforms we officially support) is worthwhile.  While I think you could write
> a new PEP, I also think it might just make sense to co-opt PEP 11 and broaden
> its scope, since as you say, removing support is only half the story.

I'd be careful to use the word "support". AFAIK, we do not offer
support for Python on any platform, beyond accepting bug reports in the
bug tracker. Paid support for Python is certainly offered by some
companies, but not by us.

IIUC, Brett is asking the question "What platforms is CPython supposed
to work on?". Thanks to autoconf, it is impossible to give a complete
list of such platforms. It might be that Python builds just fine, with
no changes required, on a system that we've never heard of.

So if you want to give a complete list of "supported" platforms, it
might be the question "What platforms do we care about?", in the sense
that someone would be willing to invest time if it stops working.
Again, as we do not offer paid support, this list might get misleadingly
long. I'd be personally willing to invest time looking into a lot of
problems - just not within the next 12 months (but surely some day :-)

The only reasonable positive platform list I can think of is
"What platforms do we consider release-critical?", in the sense of
not letting a release proceed if it fails to work on one of these
platforms. We've had such a list for a long time, it is:
- Microsoft Windows
- Linux
- Apple Mac OS X

Regards,
Martin