[Matplotlib-devel] Long term release schedule

[Thomas Caswell]

Hey all,

Any feed back on this?

Not sure if silence means you all agree or disagree so badly that no one
can compose a polite email ;).

Tom

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 12:03 AM Matthias Bussonnier <
bussonniermatthias at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey Thomas,
>
> Some comment inline,
>
> On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 8:18 PM, Thomas Caswell <tcaswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > Compared to the short term schedule this maybe be a bit for contentious
> as
> > it puts dropping Py2 on our road map.  This has been discussed by my
> self,
> > Mike Droettboom, Eric Firing and Jens Nielsen.
> >
> > As I am sure you are all aware, upstream cpython is planning to drop
> support
> > for python 2.7 in 2020 which leaves us in the scientific community to
> sort
> > out how to manage this transition.   There seems to be momentum for the
> > transition and we have reached the point where the discussion is not
> _if_ we
> > drop python 2 support but _when_.
> >
> > The Jupyter/IPython team is working to build a community wide consensus
> [0]
> > on moving to python3 for feature releases before 2020.  This text is
> still
> > under development, but text has been consistent in spirit.   Instead if
> my
> > attempting to summarize, please go read ;)
> >
> > We propose the following long term schedule for mpl:
> >
> > 2016-09/10 : 2.1
> >   what we have on master is probably good enough for a release already
> but
> > target
> >   - traitlets
> >   - the gui overhaul
> >   if we miss them, tag in late september anyway
> >
> > 2017-07 : 2.2 LTS
> >  - last feature release with 2.7 support
> >  - critical bug fixes on mpl 2.2.x branch until 2020
> >  - solicit a dedicated py2.7 maintainer
> >
> > 2018-07 : 3.0
> >   - only support py3.4+
>
> I wouldn't commit now to which version of Py3 you will support, It
> seem to me that upgrade
> of python 3 minor version seem to be a much more accepted process than fro
> Py2,
> and 2018 is 2,5 years down the road, so by that time you might decide
> to do 3.5+ only, who knows.
>
> >   - chance to break functional API if we want
> >
> > This is less aggressive of a schedule than IPython (they have a planned
> py3
> > only release at the beginning of 2017) and gives us ample time to address
> > any unexpected issues in the transition.
> >
>
> We are always 3 to 6 month behind schedule, but here is the more
> detailed roadmap [3]
>
> > This plan is not with out risks (ex as master picks up python3 only code
> it
> > will diverge from 2.2.x making back-porting bug fixes harder), however
> > continuing to support python 2.7 forever has it's own.
> >
> > If we have users that can not (or will not) switch from py2 we are going
> to
> > need those users to step up and support the continued maintenance of a
> 2.7
> > compatible branch.  My personal thinking on this has been greatly
> influenced
> > by Nick Coghlan [1], the continued support of deprecated versions of
> python
> > for commercial use can not fall on a small group of volunteers.
>
> I want to emphasize that if you would be interested in commercial
> support by that time
> (regardless of the project), it would be good to speak soon-ish, so
> that companies like
> continuum/enthought... can start planning for providing this support.
>
>
> > As a project we have a couple of decisions to make:
> >
> >  1. If we adopt this as our time line (and if not what time line do we
> use)
> >  2. If we add mpl + our time line to https://python3statement.github.io/
> >
> >
> > [0] https://python3statement.github.io/
> > [1]
> >
> http://www.curiousefficiency.org/posts/2015/04/stop-supporting-python26.html
>
> Thanks,
> --
> M
>
> [3]
> https://github.com/jupyter/roadmap/blob/master/accepted/migration-to-python-3-only.md
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/matplotlib-devel/attachments/20160514/47ec5aee/attachment.html>