[Python-Dev] What is the rationale behind source only releases?

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 3:06 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> "Alex Walters" <tritium-list at sdamon.com> writes:
>
>> I'd like to know the rationale behind source only releases of cpython.
>
> Software freedom entails the freedom to modify and build the software.
> For that, one needs the source form of the software.
>
> Portable software should be feasible to build from source, on a platform
> where no builds (of that particular release) were done before. For that,
> one needs the source form of the software.

AIUI Alex is asking about the last release(s) of each branch, eg
3.4.8. There are no official Python.org binaries published for these
releases, so anyone who wants to upgrade within the 3.4 branch has to
build it themselves.

ChrisA