[Python-Dev] Status of 2.7 and 3.2

[Nick Coghlan]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>> I have thought that 2.7 was now to come out instead with 3.2 and would
>> include backported 3.2 new features.  Others expect 2.7 to come out soon
>> after 3.1 and to only contain new 3.1 features.  So Guido or someone,
>> please clarify: is 2.7 to be the counterpart of 3.1 or 3.2?
> 
> Neither, nor. 2.7 will be released 18..24 months after 2.6, i.e. between
> April 2010 and October 2010. I think it's too early to speculate about
> a release schedule for 3.2.

I think Terry's underlying question is more basic than that. It can also
be phrased as:

"Is 2.7 allowed to have new features which did not appear in 3.1?"

In previous discussions, a general policy has been articulated that
having released Python 3.0, any new features should appear in a 3.x
release before they appear in a 2.x release. Following that policy
(which I think is actually a good one) means there are certain
consequences for the two possible answers to the above question:

A. "No."

  This answer means that 2.7 will only contain new features that are
part of 3.1. If 2.7 sticks to a normal 18-24 month release cycle the
only activities on the trunk for the next 12 months or so should be
backports from 3.1 and bug fixes. New features added to the py3k branch
for 3.2 should not be backported until after 2.7 is released. The other
alternative in this case is to release 2.7 earlier than normal, but that
creates problems in terms of the absolute duration of maintenance branch
support for 2.6.

B. "Yes."

  This answer means that the 3.1 to 3.2 development cycle will need to
be truncated by roughly 6 months so that 3.2 can be released before 2.7
with any new features of interest. The 3.2 and 2.7 releases should then
occur within a few months of each other.

Releasing 2.7 early doesn't seem like a good idea to me and neither does
putting the trunk into the equivalent of a feature freeze for 12 months
or more. So I'm in favour of the idea of a paired 3.2/2.7 release late
next year.

I don't think that's a novel idea though - I'm pretty sure it was
suggested (and met with general approval) when the idea of a short
release cycle for 3.1 was first brought up.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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