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

[Michael Sarahan]

Anaconda's compilers are for Linux (gcc 7.2) and Mac (llvm/clang 4.0.1)
right now.  We would like to have clang target all platforms, but that's a
lot of development effort.

We are also exploring ways of keeping package ecosystems in line, so that
building and managing a self-consistent set of python 2.7 packages with a
new Visual Studio version or msys2 might be easier.  No timeline to report,
on that, though.  Breaking with the python.org ABI is pretty painful.

On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Bryan Van de ven <bryanv at anaconda.com>
wrote:

>
> > On Nov 8, 2017, at 10:50, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > NumPy (and to a lesser extent SciPy) is in a tough position being at the
> > bottom of many scientific Python programming stacks. Whenever you
> > drop Python 2 support is going to upset someone.
>
> Existing versions of NumPy will still exist and continue to work with
> Python 2.7. If users want to say with Python 2.7, that's fine, they will
> just have to rely on those older/LTS versions. I personally would be happy
> for projects at the bottom of stacks to take an activist stance and make
> decisions to actively encourage movement to Python 3.
>
> > It is too ambitious to pledge to drop support for Python 2.7 no later
> than
> > 2020, coinciding with the Python development team’s timeline for dropping
> > support for Python 2.7?
>
> Developing NumPy is hard, as it is. Everything that can be done to
> simplify things for the current maintainers and help attract new
> contributors should be done. It is not reasonable to ask a few (largely
> volunteer) people to shoulder the burden and difficulties of supporting
> Python 2.7 for several additional *years* of their life.
>
> I agree entirely with Nick Coghlan's comments from another discussion, and
> think they apply equally well in this instance:
>
> """
> While it's entirely admirable that many upstream developers are generous
> enough to help their end users work around this inertia, in the long run
> doing so is detrimental for everyone concerned, as long term sustaining
> engineering for old releases is genuinely demotivating for upstream
> developers (it's a good job, but a lousy way to spend your free time) and
> for end users, working around institutional inertia this way reduces the
> pressure to actually get the situation addressed properly.
> """
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bryan
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