[Python-Dev] Continuing 2.x

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:25:28 -0700
Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:
> 
> Thinking about language features and core type this seems reasonable, but
> with the standard library this seems less reasonable -- there's lots of
> conservative changes to the standard library which aren't bug fixes, and the
> more the standard library is out of sync between Python 2 and 3 the harder
> maintaining software that works across those versions becomes.

For the same reason that new features only get in 3.2 and not in 3.1 or
2.7, for example.

I know people would like both stability *and* new features in the same
codebase, but that doesn't work. There's a reason most decently managed
software projects have separate bugfix branches and feature branches.
That's the same old discussion and it isn't specific to Python.

(and, believe me, not having to backport new 3.x features to the 2.x
branch makes our work much easier than it was; people generally seem
to underestimate the amount of care needed for such things, especially
in areas where 2.x is significantly more complex - old-style classes,
two parallel buffer APIs, misleading implicit conversions...)

Regards

Antoine.