[python-committers] Reminder: 3.6.5rc1 cutoff coming up

[Ned Deily]

A quick reminder that it's time for our next quarterly maintenance release of Python 3.6.  The cutoff for 3.6.5rc1 is planned for 2018-03-12 end-of-the-day AOE.  Please get any bug fixes and doc changes in before then.  Expect that any changes merged after the 3.6.5rc1 cutoff will be released in 3.6.6 which is currently scheduled for 2018-06 (along with 3.7.0).

Also, a reminder that 3.6.x has been out in the field for nearly 15 months now and thanks to all of your hard work in previous feature releases and during the 3.6 development phase, the 3.6 release series has seen remarkably quick adoption to overall great acclaim.  Now that 3.6 has reached a certain level of maturity, it is important for all of us to continue to focus on stability for all of its downstream users.  A key assumption of our maintenance strategy for years has been that we as a project will only maintain the most recent bugfix (or security) release.  In other words, when we release x.y.z, we immediately drop support for x.y.z-1.  To do that, we implicitly promise to users that they can "painlessly" upgrade from any x.y.n to x.y.z where n < z.  To try to keep that promise, we strive to make no incompatible changes in x.y.z without *really* good reasons.  I think it is important as 3.6 moves along in its lifecycle to put ourselves in the shoes of our users and ask ourselves if a change is really appropriate at this stage.  There's no hard and fast rule here, just continue to use your best judgement.  When in doubt, ask!

FYI, I've adjusted the 3.6.x release schedule to allow for 2 additional quarterly maintenance releases after 3.7.0 releases instead of just one.  That means the final bugfix release for the 3.6 series is planned to be 3.6.8 in 2018-12, 6 months after 3.7.0 releases and 2 years after 3.6.0 first released.  Thereafter, only security issues will be accepted and addressed for the remaining life of 3.6.

Thanks again!
--Ned

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0494/

--
  Ned Deily
  nad at python.org -- []