Should non-security 2.7 bugs be fixed?

[dieter]

Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> writes:

> On 19/07/2015 17:10, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
>> On Sunday 19 Jul 2015 15:42 CEST, Mark Lawrence wrote:
> ...
>> Babies want clean diapers. So babies have to change diapers
>> themselves?
>>
>
> That has to be the worst analogy I've ever read.  We are discussing
> backporting working patches, *NOT* having to go through the whole
> shooting match from scratch.

Nevertheless, the task is (usually) far from trivial.
Beside the pure functional aspect, you need at least also address
testing againt interference with other features, i.e. you need
detailed knowledge about Python's test suite and its setup.
This obviously is non trivial - as I have seen fixes break other things.

If C code is envolved, you need also understand Python's build environment
-- another huge requirement of specific knowledge. Especially, because
the Python build process must function on many platforms and typical
users only use a single one.

The first point causes me prefer external packages - where I (not
a community) decide about the extent of testing. It is also easy to
remove an external package should it really make problems.

The second point causes me to prefer working around problems envolving
C code rather than fixing it.