Trying tcompile an use the Python 3.4a

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Denis McMahon
<denismfmcmahon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:17:22 +0200, Ferrous Cranus wrote:
>
>> root at secure [/home/nikos/www/cgi-bin]# python3 -V Python 3.4.0a4
>
> Let me just check.
>
> Nobody is so stupid as to run alpha software on a production server[1]
> are they?
>
> [1] In this context, "production server" means any system facing the
> public internet upon which python code is executed in response to inputs
> from the public internet.

I don't know that that's necessarily stupid. For a lot of my work,
I've been using a trunk version of Pike (7.9.11 currently), and if I
were working more heavily with Python on my servers, I would consider
using alpha versions if there were features that I wanted (or fixes
that I needed). It's not stupid, but it does require a "hand on the
tiller" so to speak; running alpha code - or, for that matter, any
code you compiled yourself - in production means taking responsibility
for it. I'm confident of my own ability to keep up with changes, but
for most people, I would strongly recommend taking, in order: (1) the
Python that your distro provides; (2) a python.org published stable
version; (3) a preproduction (eg RC) version; and finally (4) anything
else, including straight from Mercurial. The further down that list
you go, the more work you have to do yourself to ensure compatibility,
dependency management, etcetera.

ChrisA