[Python-Dev] PEP 414 - Unicode Literals for Python 3

[Barry Warsaw]

On Feb 28, 2012, at 10:49 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

>On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 10:19 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> Again that's wrong. If you cleverly use 2to3 to port between branches,
>> patches only have to be written against the 2.x version.
>
>Apparently *you* know how to do that, but I don't. If I, as a CPython
>core developer, don't know how to do that, how is it reasonable to
>expect J. Random Hacker to become a Python 3 porting export?

They don't need to, but *we* do, and it's incumbent on us to educate our
users.  I strongly believe that *now* is the time to be porting to Python 3.
It's critical to the long-term health of Python.  It's up to us to learn the
strategies for accomplishing this, spread the message that it is not only
possible, but usually easy (and yes even, from my own experience, fun!).  Oh
and here's how in three easy steps, 1, 2, 3.

I've blogged about my own porting experiences extensively.  My strategies may
not work for everyone, but they will work for a great many projects.  If they
work for yours, spread the word.  If they don't, figure out something better,
write about it, and spread the word.

We really need to stop saying that porting to Python 3 is hard, or should be
delayed.  It's not in the vast majority of cases.  Yes, there are warts, and
we should continue to improve Python 3 so it gets easier, but by no means is
it impossible for most code to be working very nicely on Python 3 today.

-Barry