[Python-Dev] When to remove deprecated stuff (was: Deprecating the formatter module)

[Brett Cannon]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Ezio Melotti <ezio.melotti at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 3:29 PM, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>
> wrote:
> > On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 11:22:14 +0200, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net>
> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 11:16:20 +0200
> >> Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > 2013/8/15 Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net>:
> >> > > We don't have any substantial change in store for an eventual
> "Python
> >> > > 4", so it's quite a remote hypothesis right now.
> >> >
> >> > I prefered the transition between Linux 2 and Linux 3 (no major
> >> > change, just a "normal" release except the version), rather than the
> >> > transition between KDE 3 and KDE 4 (in short, everything was broken,
> >> > the desktop was not usable).
> >> >
> >> > I prefer to not start a list of things that we will make the
> >> > transition from Python 3 to Python 4 harder. Can't we do small changes
> >> > between each Python release, even between major versions?
> >>
> >> That's exactly what I'm saying.
> >> But some changes cannot be made without breakage, e.g. the unicode
> >> transition. Then it makes sense to bundle all breaking changes in a
> >> single version change.
> >
> > A number of us (I don't know how many) have clearly been thinking about
> > "Python 4" as the time when we remove cruft.  This will not cause any
> > backward compatibility issues for anyone who has paid heed to the
> > deprecation warnings, but will for those who haven't.  The question
> > then becomes, is it better to "bundle" these removals into the
> > Python 4 release, or do them incrementally?
> >
>
> A while ago I wrote an email to python-dev about our deprecation policy:
> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-October/114199.html
>
> My idea was to turn this into an informational PEP but I didn't
> receive much feedback.
> If people are interested I could still do it.
>

Wouldn't hurt, but should probably be a part of PEP 4.
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