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2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line?

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guido at python

Nov 4, 2009, 7:06 AM

Post #101 of 131 (1072 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Glyph Lefkowitz
<glyph [at] twistedmatrix> wrote (amongst way too many words):
> [...] For example, 2.8 could emit a deprecation
> warning for every old-style class that was defined, 2.9 could emit a
> deprecation warning for every string constant declared without a 'b' or 'u'
> prefix unless the module in question were in "3.x mode" (i.e. no-prefix ==
> 'u').

This proposal is hopelessly naive. It has been considered seriously
from all possible sides before, and there just isn't a way to make
this work. Not even with several releases as stepping points.

--
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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pje at telecommunity

Nov 4, 2009, 7:37 AM

Post #102 of 131 (1071 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

At 12:51 AM 11/4/2009 -0500, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
>With the 2.x series, users and operating systems seem to move on
>fairly rapidly, because dependencies generally continue to work if you
>upgrade just one version. This isn't quite as formal a requirement as
>I would like (warnings get generated, unit tests fail, things do
>break) but in practice, users can rely on it for most functionality.
>If 3.x could be broken into a series of transitions like that, where
>you can upgrade one version, fix some stuff, then upgrade another
>version, even if you couldn't actually support more than 2 versions at
>once, I think that we could pick up the migration pace to the point
>where we might actually be using 3.x syntax in a few years. Having a
>2.x series which goes to 2.9 and then stops isn't *quite* the same
>thing as having one that moves over continuously to some 3.x version,
>but it does seem to me that by that point the chasm between versions
>will have narrowed to a crack, and the migration will be a little hop
>over it rather than the currently-required great flying leap.

+1 (I actually thought this was the original plan.)

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ssteinerx at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 10:20 AM

Post #103 of 131 (1068 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Nov 4, 2009, at 1:06 AM, Lennart Regebro wrote:

> 2009/11/3 ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail>:
>>
>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 7:26 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
>>>
>>> It really sounds like you're saying that switching to 3.x isn't
>>> worth the
>>> cost to you, but you want to force people (including yourself) to
>>> do so
>>> anyways, because ...?
>>
>> Because that's the future of Python
>
> Or not. Maybe it's a dead branch of Python?

Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back
to 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with
increasing levels of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its
own by running out of numbers.

S

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ctrachte at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 10:39 AM

Post #104 of 131 (1068 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On 11/4/09, ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail> wrote:

> Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back
> to 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with
> increasing levels of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its
> own by running out of numbers.

<delurk>
As a user, I'm horrified. Granted, I'm not the most high powered
user, but . . .
my employer is already providing me with a 3.0 Python version on one
of my work computers with the expectation that I'll be using it more
and more.

Sorry to butt in, but is this a joke? I thought all this was hashed
out prior to inventing python 3.0.
</delurk>
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arcriley at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 10:43 AM

Post #105 of 131 (1069 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

That's not going to happen. Stop trolling the python-dev list.

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:20 PM, ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail>wrote:

> Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back to
> 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with increasing
> levels of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its own by running out
> of numbers.
>
>

guido at python

Nov 4, 2009, 10:45 AM

Post #106 of 131 (1068 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Carl Trachte <ctrachte [at] gmail> wrote:
> On 11/4/09, ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>> Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back
>> to 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with
>> increasing levels of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its
>> own by running out of numbers.
>
> <delurk>
> As a user, I'm horrified. Granted, I'm not the most high powered
> user, but . . .
> my employer is already providing me with a 3.0 Python version on one
> of my work computers with the expectation that I'll be using it more
> and more.
>
> Sorry to butt in, but is this a joke? I thought all this was hashed
> out prior to inventing python 3.0.
> </delurk>

I have no idea who "ssteinerX" is. He certainly doesn't speak for the
core developers.

--
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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martin at v

Nov 4, 2009, 10:46 AM

Post #107 of 131 (1068 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> Paul Moore <p.f.moore <at> gmail.com> writes:
>> FWIW, I did a quick survey of some packages (a sampling of packages
>> I've used or considered using in the past):
>>
>> Twisted - no plans yet for Python 3
>
> Well Twisted depends on zope.interface which is not ported yet.

That's not strictly true, see

http://svn.zope.org/zope.interface/branches/regebro-python3/

While this isn't released yet, Lennart and myself have been working
to make it work on 2.x and 3.x. So porting activities *could* start
now (requiring 3.x user to use that branch).

Regards,
Martin
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martin at v

Nov 4, 2009, 11:02 AM

Post #108 of 131 (1068 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

> For one thing, we have a very long row to hoe here. The migration to
> 3.0 is a long, tedious process with little tangible benefit. I hope
> that sometime in the next decade Twisted can accelerate the process of
> dropping old 2.x versions, but I seriously doubt we could do a
> feature-complete 3.1/2.6 version. I get the general impression that a
> 3.2/2.7 port would be more feasible; hopefully a 3.3/2.8 would be even
> moreso.

Please understand that you will not need to drop 2.x versions in order
to support 3.x. Just add 3.x support now and make sure it won't break
2.x support.

> Also, the benefits of migrating to python 3.x are still negligible, as
> far as I can tell.

For Twisted, most definitely - you will need to support 2.x and 3.x
simultaneously, so you can't really benefit from 3.x-only changes
for a long time to come - perhaps until a 3to2 tool has a good quality,
and probably not even then (since it will restrict you what you can
do in 3.x code).

> On the other hand, you've got NumPy, PyGTK, Unladen Swallow,
> PyPy, Jython, IronPython, and so on and so forth. Since I started using
> it, the strength of Python has been in its ecosystem, and the 3.x
> ecosystem is not yet viable.

Right - the advantages wouldn't be for Twisted itself, but for users
of Twisted, which would see a larger ecosystem if Twisted was available.

> The main reason I want a long 2.x series is that I believe it would more
> easily allow us infrastructure folks to drop support for *older*
> versions. With this big 2.x->3.x chasm, I can't really see an end in
> sight for Twisted using Python 2.x as its _source_ language, translating
> with 2to3.

Well, 3to2 would then be an option for you: use Python 3 as the source
language.

> Some projects which depend on Twisted and want new versions
> (and security fixes, etc) are going to want Python 2.x for a really long
> time. Maybe they're just really conservative, maybe they don't have a
> lot of maintenance energy, or maybe they have other dependencies which
> haven't got a port; it doesn't really matter, empirically speaking
> people want older versions of Python.

But wouldn't these applications also break as Twisted drops support
for old 2.x versions, and the applications fail to work on the newer
2.x version (say, 2.34)?

> Keep in mind also that the 2.x translation process is extremely slow and
> results in a clunky development process. There's no '2to3
> --interactive' commandline that lets me type python 2 at a >>> prompt
> and get python 3 results out so that I can try experiments on the 3.x
> interpreter; I have to actually put my experiments into my unit tests
> and wait 10 minutes to see if it works. It's like writing C++.

That's not my experience. I see a change in source (say, on Django)
available for 3.x within 5 seconds.

Regards,
Martin
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ssteinerx at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 11:13 AM

Post #109 of 131 (1068 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Nov 4, 2009, at 1:39 PM, Carl Trachte wrote:

> On 11/4/09, ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>> Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back
>> to 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with
>> increasing levels of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its
>> own by running out of numbers.
>
> <delurk>
> As a user, I'm horrified. Granted, I'm not the most high powered
> user, but . . .
> my employer is already providing me with a 3.0 Python version on one
> of my work computers with the expectation that I'll be using it more
> and more.
>
> Sorry to butt in, but is this a joke? I thought all this was hashed
> out prior to inventing python 3.0.

Yes, of course it was a joke.

2.7 won't "turn into" Python 3.x any more that Perl will turn into Ruby.

Oh, wait, maybe that was a bad example.

The point was, that Python 3.x does not seem to be something that can
be "evolved" into and, all along, I have been suggesting that, if
Python 3.x is the future, let's let 2.7 be the last of the 2.x series,
backport whatever will make it easiest to make 2to3 do as much of the
work as possible, and just decide that 2.7 is the end of the line.

I shudder to think how much time has been spent hacking things around
to make them compatible with the 2.x series while trying to move to 3.x.

If 2.x is over, let it be over and let's all focus on moving into
Python 3.x with no more time doing other than bug-fixes on 2.x
versions of things.

S

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cournape at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 11:15 AM

Post #110 of 131 (1068 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:02 AM, "Martin v. LÃ¶wis" <martin [at] v> wrote:

>
> That's not my experience. I see a change in source (say, on Django)
> available for 3.x within 5 seconds.

This is for which version of 2to3 ? I got similar experience (several
minutes), but maybe I am using 2to3 the wrong way. On my machine, with
2to3 from 3.1.1, it takes ~ 1s to convert one single file of 200
lines, and converting a tiny subset of numpy takes > one minute.

David
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mbk.lists at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 11:30 AM

Post #111 of 131 (1068 views)
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Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:02 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin [at] v>wrote:

> > The main reason I want a long 2.x series is that I believe it would more
> > easily allow us infrastructure folks to drop support for *older*
> > versions. With this big 2.x->3.x chasm, I can't really see an end in
> > sight for Twisted using Python 2.x as its _source_ language, translating
> > with 2to3.
>
> Well, 3to2 would then be an option for you: use Python 3 as the source
> language.
>

A migration path which would be made all the more compelling with the
addition of the nonlocal keyword to 2.7 ;-)

Mike

martin at v

Nov 4, 2009, 11:56 AM

Post #112 of 131 (1068 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

>> That's not my experience. I see a change in source (say, on Django)
>> available for 3.x within 5 seconds.
>
> This is for which version of 2to3 ? I got similar experience (several
> minutes), but maybe I am using 2to3 the wrong way. On my machine, with
> 2to3 from 3.1.1, it takes ~ 1s to convert one single file of 200
> lines, and converting a tiny subset of numpy takes > one minute.

The version released with 3.1. The trick is not to recompile all 2to3
code every time you make a source change. Instead, cache the 2to3 output
in the build area, and have setup.py only invoke 2to3 for the files
that got modified.

So whenever I make a change, I do "python3 setup.py install". This
checks all timestamps, finds the modified files (which will only be
one), runs 2to3 on it, and then copies it into my 3.1 installation,
where I can test the change. Recompiling a single file typically takes a
few seconds, or less. It would be possible to also run out of the build
area; you still would need to run "setup.py build" after every change.

There is already support for this in both distutils (as released in
3.1), and distribute.

Regards,
Martin
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brett at python

Nov 4, 2009, 2:13 PM

Post #113 of 131 (1062 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:20, ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail> wrote:
>
> On Nov 4, 2009, at 1:06 AM, Lennart Regebro wrote:
>
>> 2009/11/3 ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail>:
>>>
>>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 7:26 PM, James Y Knight wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It really sounds like you're saying that switching to 3.x isn't worth
>>>> the
>>>> cost to you, but you want to force people (including yourself) to do so
>>>> anyways, because ...?
>>>
>>> Because that's the future of Python
>>
>> Or not. Maybe it's a dead branch of Python?
>
> Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back to 2.7,
> 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with increasing levels
> of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its own by running out of
> numbers.
>

I am going to say this once: we are not killing off Python 3.

First off, Python 3 is not even a year old! Considering people have
not fully migrated to 2.6, should we kill it off as well? There is a
certain lack of perspective on time scale. This is especially true
when Guido himself has said on multiple occasions that moving the
community to 3.x would be a mult-year process, as in 3-5 years
process, not 11 months.

Second, the people calling for us to potentially kill 3.x and just
keep 2.x floating along have yet to say that they have tried porting
their code and that it was difficult. Every person who has stepped
forward stating they have done a port has said it was actually
relatively straight-forward. Not only that, we have anecdotal evidence
from multiple people that you can support code way back to whatever
old version of Python RHEL is running.

Third, the same people calling for the death of 3.x have not suggested
they have used it extensively (if at all). I have yet to hear anyone
say that 3.x is not at least a nice improvement, if not a huge one. I
for one find 3.x more enjoyable to work in than 2.x, and that's saying
a lot since I obviously loved Python 2.x enough to get involved in its
development. I have also never heard anyone ever say, "I gave 3.x a
fair shake and honestly, I wish I had not wasted the time." Wait until
3to2 gets to a good state (which will happen; it's my next project --
after I either get us moved to Hg or I simply give up on it -- and I
know I am not the only core developer planning on making it happen).

I realize that there is some fear that it will be time wasted if
people port their code to 3.x if it somehow burns out. But do you
honestly think that python-dev would leave you hanging like that?
Let's take a worst-case scenario here and say that direct pick-up of
3.x after a couple years never happens. Fine, we then begin to
backport features. But if you already ported your code then chances
are you already support the new features. And you know what one of the
first things we would back port would be? Unicode strings and bytes.
And since that is the hardest thing to port to, you will have not
wasted any time.

In other words the calling for the death of 3.x is rather premature
and honestly unfair until people have actually tried to port their
code in earnest and it has been a couple of years for the community to
catch up to what python-dev is pushing out the door (which always
takes a while no matter what minor version has been released).

-Brett
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zookog at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 2:54 PM

Post #114 of 131 (1060 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

Folks:

It occurred to me to wonder why I haven't investigated how hard it
would be to make my Python packages Python-3-compatible. That's right
-- I haven't even looked closely. I couldn't even tell you off the
top of my head what is in Python 3 that I would have to think about
except for the new unicode regime. I think the answer is that the
payoff is just *so* low to me at this point that it doesn't even
justify me taking 15 minutes to read "What's New In Python 3" or to
execute 2to3 on my smallest package and see what it does.

On the other hand, I'm totally committed to supporting Python 2.7,
because my customers will demand it and because I expect that it will
be easy.

So, if you guys slip in your favorite new Python 3 feature into 2.7
and add a deprecation warning for your least favorite Python 2
misfeature, then probably within about 24 months I'll have fixed all
code that uses the deprecated feature, and probably within about five
years I'll consider dropping backwards-compatibility with Python 2.6
and starting to use that new feature that you added to Python 2.7.

(I'm currently considering dropping Python 2.4 compatibility for the
next releases of most of my code.)

Regards,

Zooko
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p.f.moore at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 3:23 PM

Post #115 of 131 (1058 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

2009/11/4 Zooko O'Whielacronx <zookog [at] gmail>:
> On the other hand, I'm totally committed to supporting Python 2.7,
> because my customers will demand it and because I expect that it will
> be easy.

Why do you think your customers will demand 2.7 support but not 3.1
support? If I were one of your customers, I'd want 3.1 support...

Paul.
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floris.bruynooghe at gmail

Nov 4, 2009, 3:27 PM

Post #116 of 131 (1060 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 03:54:44PM -0700, Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:
> It occurred to me to wonder why I haven't investigated how hard it
> would be to make my Python packages Python-3-compatible. That's right
> -- I haven't even looked closely. I couldn't even tell you off the
> top of my head what is in Python 3 that I would have to think about
> except for the new unicode regime. I think the answer is that the
> payoff is just *so* low to me at this point that it doesn't even
> justify me taking 15 minutes to read "What's New In Python 3" or to
> execute 2to3 on my smallest package and see what it does.

<cynical mode>

You have time to read this thread but no time to read "What's New In
Python 3"?

</cynical mode>

Personally I found porting to Python 3 a rather pleasant experience
(include C extension module). I can't wait until I can drop support
for Python 2.2-2.X.

Regards
Floris

PS: I have to admit that the commerial code base I work on is still at
Python 2.5, but that doesn't make me worry in any way. It'll get to
Python 3 in time (it's running on 2.6 already in development).

--
Debian GNU/Linux -- The Power of Freedom
www.debian.org | www.gnu.org | www.kernel.org
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tjreedy at udel

Nov 4, 2009, 4:42 PM

Post #117 of 131 (1053 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:

> For what it's worth, the official position of the Twisted project is not
> that we have "no plan" to move to Python 3. It's that our plan is to do
> exactly as Raymond suggests, and give the users a vote - in this case,
> you vote with your patches :).

You probably will not hear from potential users who skip Twisted because
it is not available for 3.x. I suspect you do not hear much either from
new users who only installed 2.x to use Twisted, but would prefer 3.x.
There are regular questions on python-list about 'web programming with
3.0' or some such.

> For one thing, we have a very long row to hoe here. The migration to
> 3.0 is a long, tedious process with little tangible benefit.

One group that benefits is new Python programmers. Python 3 is easier to
learn, and is being used to teach Python in at least some schools and
universities, and will be used more as more libraries are available.
Hardly a week goes by on Python list without someone posting a problem
using 2.x that has been solved in 3.x.

Another group is existing programmers who were/are sufficiently annoyed
by some of the things that got cleaned up.

A third group is people who want to use non-ascii in identifiers, and
who are delighted now that they can.

Since you do not fall in these groups, I understand your impatience and
reluctance with the change. I can also imagine that Twisted may be more
affected by some of the changes than most other projects.

[snip more] ...

> There have been some other comments in this thread indicating that this
> was not the case because some users indicated that they'd rather deal
> with lots of changes "all at once".

I wrote that based on both my reading of clp/pylist posts during the
discussion of the int/int semantic change and Guido's report of private
conversations he had had.

> My understanding is that it was
> done this way so that the *developers* of Python could make a clean
> break, and design and implement a new version of Python without being
> constrained by compatibility concerns.

I do not believe that was ever intended. It certainly is not what
happened; many changes were not made *because* of compatibility concerns
and all went through the filter of 'is the benefit of this change worth
the pain of breakage'. There is a big difference between not being
straightjacketed and being unconstrained.

> If you can show me an actual
> application or library developer in Python who wanted this one-big-jump
> migration, I will show you a crazy person.

Be careful of labels.

Once the prolonged and intense int/int debate shifted from the ontology
of ints to the pragmatics of the proposed change, most people agreed
that int/int 'should' have meant float(int)/float(int) from the
beginning. But some were still strongly opposed to making the change
because they (understandably) did not want to have to scan (by eye)
possibly 10000s or even 100000s of lines for every a/b to determine
whether any fix was needed. Some said that that would be such a major
change that it should not be done until there was a new major release, a
Python 3 off in the then distant future. Well, that future is now.

I half-jokingly suggested that the change be made on Guido's original
timetable, but that the '2.5' that completed the change simply be
relabeled '3.0'. I personally would have preferred that it had been
completed in 2.5. But that did not happen and more changes were made
once they were made, and here we are.

Terry Jan Reedy

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tjreedy at udel

Nov 4, 2009, 4:42 PM

Post #118 of 131 (1056 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:
> Folks:

> So, if you guys slip in your favorite new Python 3 feature into 2.7
> and add a deprecation warning for your least favorite Python 2
> misfeature,

Just run with the -3 flag for warnings.

Also see my response to Glyph.

Terry Jan Reedy

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brett at python

Nov 4, 2009, 7:52 PM

Post #119 of 131 (1055 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 14:54, Zooko O'Whielacronx <zookog [at] gmail> wrote:
> Folks:
>
> It occurred to me to wonder why I haven't investigated how hard it
> would be to make my Python packages Python-3-compatible. Â That's right
> -- I haven't even looked closely. Â I couldn't even tell you off the
> top of my head what is in Python 3 that I would have to think about
> except for the new unicode regime. Â I think the answer is that the
> payoff is just *so* low to me at this point that it doesn't even
> justify me taking 15 minutes to read "What's New In Python 3" or to
> execute 2to3 on my smallest package and see what it does.
>

But the payoff is low for you because you want an object-capabilities
system and Python 3 doesn't support that kind of use (nor was Python
designed to support objcap in the first place, so it's already a
strained use in 2.x).

-Brett
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ncoghlan at gmail

Nov 5, 2009, 4:08 AM

Post #120 of 131 (1048 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

Mike Krell wrote:
> Well, 3to2 would then be an option for you: use Python 3 as the source
> language.

Making life easier for 3to2 is an *excellent* rationale for backports.

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan [at] gmail | Brisbane, Australia
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ncoghlan at gmail

Nov 5, 2009, 4:31 AM

Post #121 of 131 (1044 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

Carl Trachte wrote:
> On 11/4/09, ssteinerX [at] gmail <ssteinerx [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>> Maybe the 3.x line should just be put out of our misery, merged back
>> to 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and proceed as Glyph suggested in passing with
>> increasing levels of deprecation until it just turns into 3.x on its
>> own by running out of numbers.
>
> <delurk>
> As a user, I'm horrified. Granted, I'm not the most high powered
> user, but . . .
> my employer is already providing me with a 3.0 Python version on one
> of my work computers with the expectation that I'll be using it more
> and more.
>
> Sorry to butt in, but is this a joke? I thought all this was hashed
> out prior to inventing python 3.0.
> </delurk>

Don't worry, 3.x is still the future of the Python language. Some of the
interested onlookers are just rehashing discussions that happened years
ago *before* the 3.x branch was created. It boils down to the fact that
the real beneficiaries of the 2.x to 3.x transition are the people that
aren't using Python yet, so existing users (especially maintainers of
large libraries and frameworks) bear a disproportionate amount of the
cost of the transition while gaining little of the benefit. They're
understandably irritated by that and the situation is likely to take a
couple more years to sort itself out.

While it may be hard to tell without knowing who is and isn't a core
developer, the only point seriously under discussion is whether there is
going to be a 2.8 after 2.7, and the current answer to that is looking
to be "probably not".

Planning on that basis probably isn't a bad idea. Even if we do decide
to create a 2.8 after 3k has already been merged back to the trunk, a
new 2.8 development branch could easily be created based on the 2.7
maintenance branch instead of the trunk.

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan [at] gmail | Brisbane, Australia
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ubershmekel at gmail

Nov 5, 2009, 9:34 AM

Post #122 of 131 (1008 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan [at] gmail> wrote:

> While it may be hard to tell without knowing who is and isn't a core
> developer
>

Maybe there should be badges or something, hmmm, sounds like making an
svn-commits-hall-of-fame for python could be a nice project.

--yuv

pje at telecommunity

Nov 5, 2009, 11:18 AM

Post #123 of 131 (1002 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

At 11:27 PM 11/4/2009 +0000, Floris Bruynooghe wrote:
><cynical mode>
>
>You have time to read this thread but no time to read "What's New In
>Python 3"?
>
></cynical mode>

Given that the average developer using tons of existing libraries on
2.x is unlikely to see any killer benefits in moving to 3.x, it's a
natural attitude to have.

I fought this same battle with setuptools for a long time before it
sank in that people who don't perceive a need aren't going to RTFM,
no matter how much time said RTFMing would save them in the long run,
vs. sitting around complaining.

IOW, once someone has become annoyed by the mere appearance of a
necessity to deal with something that appears to be being foisted on
them (whether it's setuptools or Python 3), the natural tendency is
to minimize any actual work that would move in the direction of the
thing they feel forced to deal with.

For me, the closest thing to a killer feature in 3.x is argument type
declarations, and it'd be a mild convenience at best. From a
distance, many of the other changes appear like anti-features, if
only because they're changing what I've been used to for twelve-plus
years. (A few, like the removal of __metaclass__-in-locals support,
are an active hindrance to porting.)

So no, I haven't actually tried to port anything, nor have I done
more than lightly skim the porting docs... looking for some reason
why I'd *want* to move to Python 3. Heck, I have yet to use 2.6 to
run any production code, and find some of *its* changes a bit
annoying from a porting perspective. (E.g. dropping the "sets" module.)

To make Py3 migration worthwhile to developers with heavy investment
in the 2.x lines (and especially those supporting all the way back to
2.3 and 2.4), it'd have to have some *really* killer features. That
is, be more like a Python 3000, and less like a Python 2.6 with a few
bells and whistles, hampered by having to relearn some of the basic
types and a soon-to-be-rebuilt standard library.

Even if, in truth, the cost-benefit ratio right now *is* good for
migrating to 3.x, nobody's doing a good job at promoting what those
benefits are.

(And it being easy to port to is NOT a benefit: nobody cares how easy
it is to do something they don't see a reason to do in the first place.)

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martin at v

Nov 5, 2009, 12:08 PM

Post #124 of 131 (1003 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

> Mike Krell wrote:
>> Well, 3to2 would then be an option for you: use Python 3 as the source
>> language.
>
> Making life easier for 3to2 is an *excellent* rationale for backports.
>

I'm skeptical. If new features get added to 2.7: why would that simplify
3to2? It couldn't *use* these features, since it surely would have to
support 2.6 and earlier as well.

Not sure what 3to2 would do about difficult-to-convert 3.x feature (as,
perhaps, the nonlocal keyword). If it currently gives up, it then may
offer you to restrict your target versions to 2.7+. Not sure whether
users would use that option, though - perhaps they rather stop using
nonlocal in 3.x if 3to2 cannot support it for all 2.x versions they are
interested in.

Perhaps 3to2 has a work-around that still provides a good backport in
most cases. Then, the backport would not make the tool any simpler: if
3to2 would start using the backport, it would actually get more
complicated (not easier), as it now needs to support two cases.

Regards,
Martin
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regebro at gmail

Nov 5, 2009, 12:14 PM

Post #125 of 131 (1004 views)
Permalink

Re: 2.7 Release? 2.7 == last of the 2.x line? [In reply to]

2009/11/4 "Martin v. Löwis" <martin [at] v>:
>> Keep in mind also that the 2.x translation process is extremely slow and
>> results in a clunky development process. There's no '2to3
>> --interactive' commandline that lets me type python 2 at a >>> prompt
>> and get python 3 results out so that I can try experiments on the 3.x
>> interpreter; I have to actually put my experiments into my unit tests
>> and wait 10 minutes to see if it works. It's like writing C++.
>
> That's not my experience. I see a change in source (say, on Django)
> available for 3.x within 5 seconds.

True, but you need to set up a process that will convert only the
changed files, and before Distribute came with 3.0 support, that was
tedious. Now it's easy, if you want to use distribute. (Except that
there is some bug I promised to look at this week, but haven't....)

--
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
+33 661 58 14 64
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