Neil Schemenauer nas@python.ca writes:

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 10:53:53AM -0500, Michael Tiemann wrote:

...

OTOH, if somebody can make a really definitive statement that I've misinterpreted the responses, and that 2.x _as_ python should just work, and if it doesn't, it's a bug that needs to shake out, I can address that with our OS team.

I'm not sure what you mean by "should just work". Source compatibility between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is very high. The 2.0 NEWS file should list all the changes (single argument append and socket addresses are the big ones). The two versions are _not_ binary compatible. Python bytecode and extension modules have to be recompiled. I don't know if this is a problem for the Red Hat 7.1 release.

Another issue is that there is an increasing body of code out there that doesn't work with 1.5.2. Practically all the code I write uses string methods and/or augmented assignment, for example, and I occasionally get email saying "I tried to run your code and got this AttributeEror: join error message". Also there have been some small changes at the C API level around memory management, and I'd much rather program to Python 2.0 here because its APIs are *better*.

The world will be a better place when everybody runs Python 2.x, and distributions make a lot of difference here.

Just my £0.02.

Cheers, M.