[Distutils] Timeframe of 2.0 again?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Oct 24, 2003, at 4:01 PM, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

> Jeremy Hylton wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 11:39:23PM +1000, Anthony Baxter wrote:
>>>
>>>> and standard library? If so, what minimum version of python should I
>>>> code for? I figure either Py2.1 or Py2.3 - I see no reason to stop 
>>>> at
>>>> 2.2 - 2.3 is really just 2.2 with additional bugfixes &c.
>>>
>>> Last time this argument went around (in May) MAL argued for Python 
>>> 2.0.
>>> I have no problem with that, though stopping at 2.2 also makes 
>>> sense; it
>> may
>>> be the old version, but it's still widely deployed.
>>>
>> +1 from me.
>> I'm more in favor of more recent versions, but I'd be happy with 
>> anything
>> that didn't need a future statement for nested scopes.
>
> Where would you want to use nested scopes in distutils code ?
> Note that distutils code is not performance relevant. It's
> ease of customization and wide-spread usability that
> matters.
>
> You should be aware that package authors will be forced to drop
> Python <x.y support for whatever x.y version we choose for
> distutils. I wouldn't want to drop Python 2.1 support until
> Python 2.3.3 is out (I plan to skip Python 2.2 altogether because
> of the speed advantages that 2.3 has to offer :-).

I find myself using nested scopes, generators, descriptors and new 
style classes quite a lot.  It has nothing to do with performance, it's 
capability.  There are a lot of occasions where generators can save you 
quite bit of code, provide more extensibility, or spare you from using 
threads.  I'm never going to write another Python module/extension/etc. 
that goes out of its way to be Python 2.1 compatible, my vote is for 
2.2.1 and later.

-bob