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About the Python 2 to 3 Transition...

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ewemoa:
Curious as to the current state, went looking and came across:

http://blog.startifact.com/posts/alex-gaynor-on-python-3.html
http://alexgaynor.net/2013/dec/30/about-python-3/
https://plus.google.com/+IanBicking/posts/iEVXdcfXkz7

Any one seen more recent things?

mouser:
Very interesting reading -- thank you for sharing.  Python 3 is a debacle.

Jibz:
Speaking of which, just saw the announcement that Python 2.7 support has been extended from 2015 to 2020.

Personally, I was happy to start seeing projects supporting Python3, so I hope this will not be a setback.

ewemoa:
Thanks for that link.

One of the comments seems to clarify (slightly edited to cope with the forum formatting):

The core developers are not required to maintain 2.7 post-2015, and most of them won't be involved in it. That part hasn't changed.

What is happening is that Red Hat is preparing to cut a RHEL 7 release, which AFAIK depending on how much you pay them they support for 13 years. So they will need to figure out how to support 2.7 themselves at least through 2027.

Here is where I am reading between the lines. RH are well within their right to fork Python and keep their maintenance patches to themselves and their customers (Python's not copyleft). But, they are nice guys and so maybe they are willing to upstream their changes at least for awhile if there is still a Python project willing to accept them. Again, this is my speculation based on the ML discussion, not what RH has actually said they will do.

An analogy can be made to Rails LTS, a commercial fork of Rails 2.x that patio11 was involved in. Inevitably somebody is going to step in to support 2.7, and so let's see what we can do to avoid a situation where the only way to keep running 2.7 is to subscribe to RHEL.

Meanwhile, there are some large companies that use 2.7 extensively on Windows (e.g. Enthought, Anaconda) and the thinking goes that somebody can probably be found to produce a Windows installer once in awhile, assuming that Python.org will still host a download.

So really what is happening here is not very exciting. The core committers aren't doing anything different than leaving the project as originally planned. What is happening is that they will leave the lights on in the source control repository and on the FTP server, so as to capture the free labor from people at large companies who have an interest in continuing to support 2.7.

--- End quote ---

phitsc:
And here's Drew Crawford's opinion about Python 3 (and Python 2 whiners ;) ).

http://sealedabstract.com/rants/python-3-is-fine/

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