[Python-Dev] rationale for the no-new-features approach

[Barry Warsaw]

On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 23:46, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:

> That way instead of multi-line "except NameError" tests all over the 
> place you can simply have one-liner boilerplate for every module in your 
> project:
> 
> 	'from py24compat import *'
> 
> Easy to grep/sed for when you're ready to stop supporting old versions, 
> too, for those of you without a copy of the refactoring editor from the 
> 2009 release of PyDev/Eclipse.

I do something very similar, both for Mailman and for the commercial
products I'm working on.  There are lots of ways to handle this kind of
thing, and there might be some value in a community effort to work
together and standardize this.  IWBNI there were some common idioms and
packages that people could use.  Having said that...

> The only problem with this idea is that the 2.3 -> 2.4 transition has 
> been extremely smooth for me - there are no new features I desperately 
> want to use, and there are no old features that were deprecated or 
> altered (that I've found yet - knock on wood).  Still, future 
> incompatibilties are inevitable.

...I agree.  We just upgraded to 2.4 internally and it went
embarrassingly smoothly.  Had to find something else to do with the four
days (cough - warsaw's first law - cough) we'd scheduled for that.

-Barry

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