[Numpy-discussion] Proposal of timeline for dropping Python 2.7 support

[Ralf Gommers]

On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 7:25 AM, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Thought I'd toss this out there. I'm tending towards better sooner than
> later in dropping Python 2.7 support as we are starting to run up against
> places where we would like to use Python 3 features. That is particularly
> true on Windows where the 2.7 compiler is really old and lacks C99
> compatibility.
>

This is probably the most pressing reason to drop 2.7 support. We seem to
be expending a lot of effort lately on this stuff. I was previously
advocating being more conservative than the timeline you now propose, but
this is the pain point that I think gets me over the line.

In any case, the timeline I've been playing with is to keep Python 2.7
> support through 2018, which given our current pace, would be for NumPy 1.15
> and 1.16. After that 1.16 would become a long term support release with
> backports of critical bug fixes up until the time that Python 2.7 support
> officially ends. In that timeline, NumPy 1.17 would drop support for 2.7.
>

And 3.4 at the same time or even earlier.

That proposed schedule is subject to change pending developments and feed
> back.
>

+1


> The main task I think is needed before dropping 2.7 is better handling of
> unicode strings and bytes. There is the #4208
> <https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/4208> PR that makes a start on that.
>

Yep, at the very least we need one release that supports 2.7 *and* has
fixed all the IO issues on 3.x

Ralf


If there are other things that folks think are essential, please mention
> them here. If nothing else, we can begin planning for the transition even
> if the schedule changes.
>
> Chuck
>
> _______________________________________________
> NumPy-Discussion mailing list
> NumPy-Discussion at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/attachments/20171106/4449862c/attachment.html>