[Python-Dev] Python 4: don't remove anything, don't break backward compatibility

[MRAB]

On 2014-03-10 17:08, R. David Murray wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:06:22 -0000, Brett Cannon <bcannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon Mar 10 2014 at 11:50:54 AM, Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > 2014-03-10 16:25 GMT+01:00 Stefan Richthofer <Stefan.Richthofer at gmx.de>:
>> > > I don't see the point in this discussion.
>> > > As far as I know, the major version is INTENDED to
>> > > indicate backward-incompatible changes.
>> >
>> > This is not a strict rule. I would like to follow Linux 3 which didn't
>> > break the API between Linux 2 and Linux 3.
>> >
>>
>> I disagree. I don't think 3->4 will be as drastic as it was for 2->3, but I
>> view Python 4 as a chance to drop all deprecated APIs that we left in for
>> convenience in porting from Python 2 (e.g. the imp module). We can't put a
>> removal date as we can't really declare Python 2 dead for the whole
>> community. But when Python 4 does come out next decade I would like to say
>> that we have moved entirely beyond Python 2 as a team and thus don't turn
>> into Java and support deprecated code forever.
>
> We had this discussion a bit ago, and my sense was that we tentatively
> decided that we were just going to deprecate and remove things as
> appropriate, irregardless of version number.  I used "4.0" in my
> message about 'U' as a shorthand for "some time after python2
> is no longer an issue".  Sorry for the confusion.  (That said, I
> do see some merit to doing some extra cleaning at the 4.0
> boundary, just for mental convenience.)
>
What does "irregardless" mean?