ZODB and Python 2.5

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 14:04:46 -0500, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
>Andrew McLean wrote:
>> I'm going to have to delay upgrading to Python 2.5 until all the
>> libraries I use support it. One key library for me is ZODB. I've Googled
>>   and can't find any information on the developers' plans. Does anyone
>> have any information that might help?
>
>Since the Python development team tries hard to maintain backwards
>compatibility, the vast majority of Python packages will automatically support
>the newest release of Python in that they will work just dandy. Developers don't
>really have plans to do that kind of support since it just happens.

Python 2.5 made quite a changes which were not backwards compatible,
though.  I think for the case of Python 2.4 -> Python 2.5 transition,
quite a few apps will be broken, many of them in relatively subtle
ways (for example, they may have been handling OSError instead of
WindowsError, or they may have relied on exceptions being classic classes,
or it might not be able to handle NullImporter, or it might define a
slightly buggy but previously working __hash__ which returns the id() of
an object or it may be unable to handle the unconditional stderr writes
that the compiler does when it encounters `with' used as a variable or it
might have relied on top-level code having a name of "?" rather than the
new "module" or it might have relied on the atime and mtime fields of a
stat structure being integers rather than floats).

>
>If you mean something else by "support" (like making use of new language or
>standard library features), then what do you mean?
>
>I would suggest, in order:
>
>1) Look on the relevant mailing list for people talking about using ZODB with
>Python 2.5.
>
>2) Just try it. Install Python 2.5 alongside 2.4, install ZODB, run the test suite.
>

These are pretty good suggestions, though, particularly the latter.

Jean-Paul