Python 3

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Scott Aubrey writes:

 > Why is that idea of dropping Python 2.4 (and Redhat 5 etc) such a
 > bad thing?

The short answer is that some customers want that support.  And
(surprise) these are Customers, excuse me, *Mr.* Customers *Sirs* with
a capital C (C for "cash in hand").  (That's a joke; I don't know what
the real reason is, that's a plausible guess, though.)

 > Isn't that what these people expect from Redhat, why expect more
 > from bazaar?

Because they are different cases.  Redhat is expected to leave you
with a stable, bugfix only version because their job is to provide a
platform on which *everything* works.  This allows you (FSVO "you")
to choose (a) to upgrade nothing and have a system that becomes
monotonically more stable over time, with exactly the same features,
or (b) to upgrade only locally-developed software, which presumably
you understand pretty well, and you can restrict bug hunts to that
well-understood software, or (c) to upgrade a select few mission-
critical applications, and restrict bug hunts to that relatively well-
understood mission-critical set.  It's your choice, Red Hat enables it
by providing that rock-solid platform.

Bazaar is an application, and while many people are perfectly happy
with Bazaar 0.9 still, others consider Bazaar a mission-critical
support tool, they greatly appreciate the new features and performance
improvements, and they want to upgrade to more modern version once it
becomes stable.  However, they may also demand a rock-solid platform
in other respects.  It's perfectly reasonable for them to *want* to
run Bazaar 2.2 on Red Hat 5.  The question for Bazaar devs is "should
they satisfy that desire?"

Martin's answer is clearly "yes", and you know what, I know he knows a
lot more about it than me, so there you go.