[SciPy-Dev] Required Python Version

[Benjamin Root]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Joshua Holbrook <josh.holbrook at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 10:32 AM, Benjamin Root <ben.root at ou.edu> wrote:
> > FWIW, NOAA has recently (within the past year, I believe) gotten approval
> to
> > *upgrade* to RHEL5.  And because of IT policies, or because they need to
> run
> > programs on servers out of their control, many of the users can not
> > personally update their version of Python away from 2.4.
> >
> > I am sure there are other government agencies that are in the same boat.
> >
> > Ben Root
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 5:25 AM, Ralf Gommers
> >> <ralf.gommers at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> > On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 8:06 PM, David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com
> >
> >> > wrote:
> >> >> Yes, a lot of "enterprise ready"  distributions still use python 2.4
> >> >> (RHEL, Centos).
> >> >>
> >> > That's not a convincing argument for an infinite amount of time.
> People
> >> > who
> >> > value "enterprise ready" meaning they run ancient stuff should be
> >> > perfectly
> >> > fine with numpy 1.4 + scipy 0.8 for a long time from now. And
> otherwise
> >> > they
> >> > can upgrade python itself quite easily. 2.4 doesn't even get security
> >> > updates anymore.
> >>
> >> Your argument makes sense to me (and this decision doesn't affect me
> >> either way), but it isn't actually an infinite amount of time --
> >> RHEL6, which ships python 2.6, is coming out in a matter of months.
> >>
> >> Someone should probably poll the -users list in any case -- people
> >> running from SVN are not necessarily a representative sample of the
> >> user base :-)
> >>
> >> -- Nathaniel
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> SciPy-Dev mailing list
> >> SciPy-Dev at scipy.org
> >> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > SciPy-Dev at scipy.org
> > http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev
> >
>
> I was just using some incredistale government computers yesterday, and
> they were running python 2.5. I'd support dropping 2.4, especially if
> scipy is going to start supporting even more python versions. In
> addition, users requiring 2.4 support can use older versions of numpy,
> scipy, etc. As long as these versions are made available, I think
> everything would be okay.
>
> --Josh
>
>
And I have seen a few independently administered government machines running
Fedora, that doesn't necessarily reflect the IT policy of government
servers.  What would probably be important to find out is if the
features/enhancements that would be made available by dropping support for
2.4 outweigh leaving behind a group of (dedicated) users.  In addition, are
there features/enhancements that are planned that don't require dropping
2.4, but that these users would also want/need?

Note, I am all for moving ahead and eliminating cruft, however, the
meteorological community is at a critical point right now and is starting to
realize the value of Python.  I have just found out that at the next annual
meeting of the American Meteorological Society, there will be a special
symposium on the applications of Python to the field of meteorology. I
wouldn't want to alienate an field that is largely in the government sector,
so this decision isn't to be taken lightly.

Ben Root
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