[Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[R. David Murray]

On Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:25:12 +0900, "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> 2.x's EOL was discussed in the past (the thread about "why no 2.8?"),
> and what we observe is nobody coming forward to maintain Python 2 for
> the fun of it.  People not only work on Python 3 for the fun of it,
> but they even port packages to Python 3 for the fun of it![1]

Indeed.  As one of the people who regularly makes commits to Python,
I can say that not applying bug fixes to 2.7 will be a big relief.
Having to patch 2.7 roughly doubles the time it takes to commit a fix
(much more if the fix doesn't apply cleanly), and I find myself more and
more likely to say "well, it's been that way in Python2 for a long while,
fixing it there is more likely to break things than it is to improve
things, so let's not backport".  Or, as gps said, just leaving the issue
open to see if anyone else is willing to put in the effort to backport it.

I am likely to continue to consider backporting fixes (I mostly do stdlib
stuff) until Benjamin stops issuing bugfix releases, but the bar for a
fix getting backported will continue to rise, and by the time of 3.4 my
behavior may well be almost indistinguishable from those who are deciding
to stop backporting fixes at the 3.4 boundary :)

As others have pointed out, we are not talking about the end of 2.7,
just of the end of python-dev doing 2.7 bugfix releases.  2.7 will live
on longer than even 2.3/2.4 did, I expect, and I personally have no
problem with that.

My primary customers *are* using Python3, by the way.  But I and they
still use Python2 for lots of things, and will probably do so for a while
yet.  So I can also speak from a customer/consultant perspective and say
that I have no problem with the impending end of 2.7 bugfix releases.
In fact (except for IDLE, which I don't use myself but I really want to
see improved), I would be fine if this *had* been the last 2.7 bugfix
release :)

--David