[Python-Dev] release plan for 2.5 ?

[Brett Cannon]

On 2/10/06, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, Neal Norwitz <nnorwitz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/7/06, Jeremy Hylton <jeremy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > > It looks like we need a Python 2.5 Release Schedule PEP.
> >
> > Very draft: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0356.html
> >
> > Needs lots of work and release managers.  Anthony, Martin, Fred, Sean
> > are all mentioned with TBDs and question marks.
>
> Before he went off to a boondoggle^Woff-site at a Mexican resort, Neal
> made me promise that I'd look at this and try to get the 2.5 release
> plan going for real.
>
> First things first: we need a release manager. Anthony, do you want to
> do the honors again, or are you ready for retirement?
>
> Next, the schedule. Neal's draft of the schedule has us releasing 2.5
> in October. That feels late -- nearly two years after 2.4 (which was
> released on Nov 30, 2004). Do people think it's reasonable to strive
> for a more aggressive (by a month) schedule, like this:
>
>     alpha 1: May 2006
>     alpha 2: June 2006
>     beta 1:  July 2006
>     beta 2:  August 2006
>     rc 1:    September 2006
>     final:   September 2006
>
> ??? Would anyone want to be even more aggressive (e.g. alpha 1 right
> after PyCon???). We could always do three alphas.
>

I think that schedule is fine, but going alpha after PyCon is too fast
with the number of PEPs that need implementing.
[SNIP]
> >    PEP 352: Required Superclass for Exceptions
>
> I believe this is pretty much non-controversial; it's a much weaker
> version of PEP 348 which was rightfully rejected for being too
> radical. I've tweaked some text in this PEP and approved it. Now we
> need to make it happen. It might be quite a tricky thing, since
> Exception is currently implemented in C as a classic class. If Brett
> wants to sprint on this at PyCon I'm there to help (Mon/Tue only).
> Fortunately we have MWH's patch 1104669 as a starting point.
>

I might sprint on it.  It's either this or I will work on the AST
stuff (the PyObject branch is still not finishd and thus it has not
been finalized if that solution or the way it is now will be the final
way of implementing the compiler and I would like to see this
settled).

Either way I take responsibility to make sure the PEP gets implemented
so you can take that question off of the schedule PEP.

[SNIP]
> PEP 351 - freeze protocol. I'm personally -1; I don't like the idea of
> freezing arbitrary mutable data structures. Are there champions who
> want to argue this?
>

If Barry doesn't even care anymore I say kill it.

[SNIP]
> PEP 315 - do while. A simple enough syntax proposal, albeit one
> introducing a new keyword (which I'm fine with). I kind of like it but
> it doesn't strike me as super important -- if we put this off until
> Py3k I'd be fine with that too. Opinions? Champions?
>

Eh, seems okay but I am not jumping up and down for it.  Waiting until
Python 3 is fine with me if a discussion is warranted (don't really
remember it coming up before).
[SNIP]
> PEP 332 - byte vectors. Looks incomplete. Put off until 2.6?
>

I say put off.  This could be discussed at PyCon since this might be
an important type to get right.

[SNIP]
> PEP 344 - exception chaining. There are deep problems with this due to
> circularities; perhaps we should drop this, or revisit it for Py3k.
>

I say revisit issues later.  Raymond says he has an idea for chaining
just the messages which could be enough help for developers.  But
either way I don't think this has been hashed out enough to go in
as-is.  I suspect a simpler solution will work, such as ditching the
traceback and only keeping either the text that would have been
printed or just the exception instance (and thus also its message).

-Brett