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

[Eric V. Smith]

On 03/10/2014 02:21 PM, MRAB wrote:
> 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?

Read it as "without regard to".