[Python-Dev] readd u'' literal support in 3.3?

[Carl Meyer]

On 12/09/2011 08:35 AM, Michael Foord wrote:
> On 9 Dec 2011, at 15:13, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>> Oh, I remember this one, because I think I reported and fixed it.
>> But I take it as a given that Python 2.6 is the minimal (sane)
>> version to target for one-codebase cross-Python code.
>> 
> 
> In mock (at least 5000 lines of code including tests) I target 2.4 ->
> 3.2+. Admittedly mock does little I/O but does some fairly crazy
> introspection (and even found bugs in Python 3 because of it).

pip and virtualenv also both support 2.4 - 3.2+ from a single codebase
(pip is ~7300 lines of code including tests, virtualenv ~1600). I
consider them a bit of a special case; since they are both early-stage
bootstrapping tools, the inconvenience level for users of a 2to3 step or
having to keep separate versions around would be higher than for an
ordinary library.

But I will say that the workarounds necessary to support 2.4 - 3.2 have
not really been problematic enough to tempt me towards a more complex
workflow, and I would probably take the single-codebase approach with
another port, even if I needed to support pre-2.6. The sys.exc_info()
business is ugly indeed, but (IMHO) not bad enough to warrant adding
2to3 hassles into the maintenance workflow.

Carl