[SciPy-User] Pylab - standard packages

[Fernando Perez]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Thomas Kluyver <takowl at gmail.com> wrote:
> What about the transition period I described: if we define version 4,
> we should keep saving as v3 for a while until we judge most people
> have updated to a version that can open v4. Obviously for the standard
> we need some certainty that a future upgrade won't break
> collaboration, but I think we can do that without promising eternal
> forwards compatibility. This must be a common issue for file formats
> and protocols. The IPV6 rollout is an example on a much bigger scale -
> software to handle it was being rolled out for years before anyone
> started turning it on.

Yes, I think that's a very sensible strategy.  The uptake of the
format in the wild has been very rapid, so from now on we'll want to
be really, really careful with how we evolve it.

While that is a constraint, fortunately we're seeing pretty
non-trivial things done with the format in its current form, and the
design of our metadata machinery (already in place, even if it's
unexposed yet UI-wise) makes me reasonably confident that we'll be
able to keep this for a while.

Ah, the burden of users ;)

f