[Python-Dev] Release question

[Martin v. Löwis]

Jack Diederich <jack@performancedrivers.com> writes:

> The PEPs are pretty thorough about how to announce and build
> releases.  My question is about cvs, branching, and feature freezes.
> I joined python-dev after the 2.2 release so I haven't been around
> for a 'round number' release yet.

Notice that PEP 101 *does* talk about CVS branches and tags, for
releases. Branches are not used much for anything else in Python.

> I'm guessing 2.3 is in bugfix only mode.  

Correct; there will be one more beta, release candidates, and a
release.

> When is 2.4 tagged, and what is the timeframe on that? (the linux
> kernel generally waits a while before starting the next dev branch).

This is not how Python works. Immediately after 2.3 is released, 2.4
development starts. Bugs discovered in 2.3 are then fixed both on the
2.3-maint branch and HEAD (if there are any volunteers from the PBF,
those patches may also get applied to the 2.2-maint branch if
applicable).

In Linux, a new "unstable" kernel is usually started with a major
restructuring of everything, so the "unstable" code base diverges
quickly from the previous release. This is not the case for Python -
we still have a lot of code that was in 1.5.

Regards,
Martin