[Python-Dev] New functionality in micro releases (was: Documenting branch policy)

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Just van Rossum writes:
 > It's been a huge pain with 2.2 vs. 2.2.1 even: all stuff written for
 > 2.2.1 that uses booleans does _not_ work on plain 2.2, which is what's

No code written for 2.2.1 should be using bool(), True, or False;
those were not documented in 2.2.1 *at all* as far as I can tell.  The
description of bool() was added to the docs in 2.2.3, and I'm not sure
why, though it is noted that it was added in 2.2.1.  I'd be happy to
rip it out of the documentation, or add a stronger compatibility
warning, for 2.2.4.

 > installed on OSX 10.2. Which sortof kills the advantage of having a
 > Python installed with the OS to begin with. In retrospect, I would have
 > been strongly against adding booleans to 2.2.1 for this reason. Apart
 > from real bugs, I think every program that works on 2.x.y should work on
 > 2.x.z, regardless of whether y > z or y < z.

Depending on just what you mean "every program that works", this could
completely prevent these bugfix releases.  We might not be able to
remove a core dump since it would allow code to run that was not run
before, thereby changing the behavior of the code.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation