Maintenance release? (Was RE: Variables different between .py and .pyc)

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <mailman.989292370.17963.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>[Carlos Ribeiro, on a proposed change to make .pyc/.pyo files store
> repr(float) instead of str(float)]
>
>> Will this change break compatibility on the .pyc format, or can it
>> be done in a compatible way?
>
>The .pyc format doesn't care -- when it sees the "float" typecode, it just
>reads the following string into a buffer and passes it to atof().
>
>However, for 2.0.1, Aahz has been talking a hard "*no* chance of breaking
>code!" line.  While the .pyc format is clearly losing gobs of precision
>needlessly here, it's certainly going to change results if precision gets
>boosted.

Ouch.  This is the kind of situation where I was thinking that a
distinction between "bugfix release" and "maintenance release" might be
useful.  OTOH, it's hard to imagine a case where fixing this would make
things worse....  I mean, really, what could this break?
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