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

[Barry Warsaw]

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On Sep 27, 2006, at 9:32 PM, <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:

>> 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.
>
> Would it be possible to maintain a rough list of Python-2.3-and-later
> features that are required for current Mailman as the requirements are
> added?  That would at least give folks who think they need an older
> Python some idea of what would be involved in adapting their Python
> installation to Mailman needs.

Mark Sapiro wrote this message describing the unintended breakage in  
Mailman 2.1.9:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2006-September/ 
053290.html

So the big difference between 2.1 and 2.2 was the unification of  
classes and types, which also changed the built-in factory functions  
like int() and str() to be types instead of functions.

No one should use Python 2.2 for anything really.  It was a fairly  
radical release and many of the new features didn't stabilize until  
Python 2.3.  The main reason I want to drop Python 2.1 and 2.2 is  
that I simply can't build them on OS X any more, so I can't  
effectively test them.  I'm not sure if Tokio and Mark are in the  
same boat though.  I can't build Python 2.3 either, but at least  
there, I don't have to (thanks Apple!).

As for Mailman 2.2, there are lots and lots of features I want to use  
from Python 2.4.  Built-in sets, generators, PEP 292 $-strings  
(pioneered in Mailman), decorators, and the subprocess module to name  
a few.  Of the new-in-Python 2.5 features I'd use but can live  
without, probably conditional expressions absolute imports, and the  
with statement are the most interesting.  Oh, and the built-in  
sqlite3 package <wink>.

http://www.python.org/doc/2.3/whatsnew/whatsnew23.html
http://www.python.org/doc/2.4/whatsnew/whatsnew24.html
http://www.python.org/doc/2.5/whatsnew/whatsnew25.html

- -Barry

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