On 24.01.2017 22:08, Victor Stinner wrote:
2017-01-24 21:46 GMT+01:00 Neil Schemenauer <nas-python@arctrix.com>:
Maybe we could emulate the Linux kernel releases. I.e. have relatively fast moving development but also choose releases to give long maintenance cycles. Ideally the long term releases would be synchronized with OS distribitions (e.g. Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu).
You should take a look at this old deferred PEP: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0407/
I don't understand the reasoning behind that PEP. With the proposed timing, those "LTS" releases would be no different than what we have today.
The only effect of the PEP would be to do releases more often, which then results in using up minor release version numbers much too fast to give the impression of a stable programming system.
FWIW: I don't consider a release which is supported for just two years a long term support release. If we start using such a term it should match people's expectation following Ubunutu's LTS cycles, i.e. you get (at least) 5 years support for the release.
All that said, I believe a having a Python 2.7 style long support version for Python 3 would be nice and have a stabilizing effect which our user base would appreciate.
I'd not make this based on any timing, though. We'd just say: this is our new LTS release (e.g. Python 3.7) and then move on until we're confident again that the feature set has stabilized enough to create a new LTS release.
Perhaps making the last minor version to a major release version as we did with 2.7 is a good approach, i.e. we'd switch the major number when cutting an LTS release and follow similar guidelines as we have for 2.7 for this 3.x LTS release.
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