[Python-Dev] HP-UX pr not feeling the love

[Lukasz Langa]

Hi Rob,
thanks for your patch. CPython core developers, as volunteers, have limited resources available to maintain Python. Those resources are not only time, they are also mental resources necessary to make a change in Python as well as actual physical resources. Supporting a platform requires all three:

1. You need time to make a platform work initially, and then continuous effort to keep it working, fixing regressions, including this platform in new features, etc.
2. You need mental resources to manage additional complexity that comes from #ifdef sprinkled through the code, cryptic configure/Makefile machinery, etc.
3. You need access to machines running the given operating system to be able to test if your changes are compatible.

This is why we are keeping the list of supported platforms relatively short. In fact, in time we're cutting support for less popular platforms that we couldn't keep running. Details in https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0011/ <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0011/>. Look, just in 3.7 we're dropping IRIX and systems without threads.

As you're saying, while your current PR is relatively innocent, more are needed to make it work. If those require more drastic changes in our codebase, we won't be able to accept them due to reasons stated above.

I understand where you're coming from. If you're serious about this, we would need to see the full extent of changes required to make Python 3.7 work on HP UX, preferably minimal. We would also need a buildbot added to our fleet (see http://buildbot.python.org/ <http://buildbot.python.org/>) that would ensure the build stays green. Finally, we would need you to think whether you could provide the patches that keep the build green for a significant period of time (counted in years).

- Ł



> On Dec 6, 2017, at 7:22 AM, Rob Boehne <robb at datalogics.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Back in June I was fired up to get my diverse set of platforms all running Python 3, but quickly ran into issues and submitted a PR.
> 
> https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/2519 <https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/2519>
> 
> It seems as though this HP-UX specific change isn’t getting much consideration, which probably isn’t a big deal.  What may be more important is that I’ve stopped trying to contribute, and if I really need Python 3 on HP-UX, AIX, Sparc Solaris or other operating systems, I’ll have to hack it together myself and maintain  my own fork, while presumably others do the same.  At the same time I’m working hard to convince management that we shouldn’t create technical debt by maintaining patches to all the tools we use, and that we should get these changes accepted into the upstream repos.
> 
> Could someone have a look at this PR and possibly merge?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rob Boehne
> 
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