[Mailman-Developers] [Mailman-Users] OS X & Mailman & Python

[Barry Warsaw]

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I'm including mailman-developers on this message, because I want to  
discuss the issue of which Python versions to support.

On Sep 27, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Stubbs Jeff wrote:

> Got a question. I picked up another Mac, so I'm going to rebuild my
> list server from scratch, using Postfix 2.3.3 and Mailman 2.1.9. The
> default python install supplied by Apple is version 2.3.5. Last week
> or so , I noticed the version 2.4.3 was available from the Python
> website in an OS X installer. This morning, I noticed that the 2.5
> version was available. (whew, the developers must be sucking in the
> coffee).
>
> All things being equal, would Mailman benefit from using the 2.5
> version as opposed to Apple's 2.3.5?
>
> The old server seemed to run fine, but I wouldn't mind upgrading
> python, if it wasn't going to be problematic.

My recommendation would be to run at least Python 2.4.  Mailman 2.1.9  
should run on Python 2.5, but earlier versions of Mailman won't.   
While we still claim to be able to run Mailman 2.1 on versions of  
Python back to 2.1, I believe we broke that claim in Mailman 2.1.9.   
Does anybody care?

I would dearly love to drop support for Python 2.1 and Python 2.2  
even in the Mailman 2.1 series.  As I'm developing on OSX myself  
these days, I can't even build these earlier versions of Python and  
they haven't been supported by the PSF for years.  In fact, Python  
2.3 is no longer supported and I would even love to drop support for  
Python 2.3 in Mailman 2.1.x, although I know we can't.

Then there is the question of what versions we support for Mailman  
2.2, which is currently under development.  Previously we've said  
we'll support Python 2.3 but I think we should revisit that decision.

In summary my preferences would be:

Mailman 2.1.x supported on Python 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5.  Drop support  
for Python 2.1 and 2.2.  We've done this accidentally in Mailman  
2.1.9, so let's make it official.

Mailman 2.2 supported on Python 2.4 and 2.5.

- -Barry

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