[Python-Dev] 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line?

Georg Brandl g.brandl at gmx.net
Tue Nov 3 22:00:21 CET 2009


Terry Reedy schrieb:
> James Y Knight wrote:
> 
>> If that happens, it's not true that there's *nowhere* to go. A solution 
>> would be to discard 3.x as a failed experiment, take everything that is 
>> useful from it and port it to 2.x, and simply continue development from 
>> the last 2.x release. And from there, features can be deprecated and 
>> then removed a few releases later, as is the usual policy.
> 
> The once 'usual policy' of removal was changed several years ago to 
> 'defer removals until 3.0' because people wanted a more stable language 
> and claimed that they would prefer to deal with several removals all at 
> once. So old-style classes were kept around long past when they would 
> have been removed under the old 'usual policy'. Ditto for old-style int 
> / int and some others.  Or one can simply recognize that 3.0 was the 
> 'few releases later' release of that policy.
> 
> The other big change was switching to unicode strings from ascii strings 
> with optional unicode string add-on. That was/is/will-be a hassle 
> regardless of when and what name, but necessary for Python to be a 
> modern world language.

>From my experience, string to unicode migration really is the biggest
pain when porting anything that handles real-world data.

An interesting experiment would have been to split the big changes in two
parts, e.g., a 2.95 that only has the string to unicode changes, and
a 3.0 that has all the rest.  Of course, people would have complained
about having to port twice :)

Georg



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