[Python-Dev] Status of various Python branches

[Jeremy Hylton]

>>>>> "GvR" == Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes:

  GvR> I believe the PBF has reached consensus that Python 2.2 will be
  GvR> the tie-wearing release.

Did we ever establish what kind of tie?  I was thinking a string tie
would be distinctive!

  GvR> IMO this means that backporting fixes to 2.2 will continue to
  GvR> be valuable; I don't see the PBF coming up with a volunteer to
  GvR> do this right away.  If you can't backport a fix yourself, at
  GvR> least add something like "bugfix candidate" to the checkin
  GvR> message.

It would be helpful if the Snake Farm was more accessible to
developers.  Specifically, I see that they are running regular builds
of Python and, apparently, collecting the output of "make test."  It
is hard, however, to find the actual results of these test runs.  I've
got a bunch of concrete suggestions, but I don't know who to make them
to.

The test results we get from the Zope CVS are quite helpful, and I'd
find similar results for the Python CVS equally helpful.  The results
could show several branches, debug vs. normal build, and different
platforms.  Getting those results every night would notify us of
errors much more reliabily than depending on individual developers
checking in changes to run all those various tests.

  GvR> I think that backporting fixes to 2.1 is *not* worth our time
  GvR> any more, with the exception of (a) critical security fixes,
  GvR> and (b) fixes for severe problems that we know affect Python
  GvR> 2.1 users who cannot upgrade to 2.2.  Example: Zope 2.5
  GvR> requires Python 2.1.  I'm not aware of any such fixes now.

I'm going to make one more change on the release21-maint branch,
because my earlier httplib bug fix had a few bugs of its own.

Jeremy