Breaking python2.4 compatibility for bzr-2.4

[John Arbash Meinel]

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...
> The table is grouped by minor python version, ignoring the
> micro-release; within groups, it's sorted by Released (descending)
> and #RS (ascending).
> 
>     Distro           Release           Python[1]   Released[2]  #RS[3]
>     --------------   ---------------   ---------   -----------  ------
>     CentOS [4]       5.6               2.4.3       2011-04      0
>     Oracle           R5-U6             2.4.3       2011-01      1
>     RHEL             5.6               2.4.3       2011-01      1
>     Novell/SUSE      10-SP3            2.4.2       2009-10      1
>     Gentoo [4]       2008.0            2.4.4       2008-07      2
> 
> Notes:
>   [1] Some distros ship with more than one Python version.  This
>       is the one reported by distrowatch.com, i.e. the release's
>       "default" version.

This is actually a fairly big point to me. The people who say they can't
run python > 2.4 is because it isn't available at all (in the case of
RHEL5). If a distribution happens to ship 2.4/5/6 but defaults to 2.4,
they could still run a bzr that is only compatible with 2.6+.

...

> Comments:
> 
> CentOS's latest release is still on Python 2.4.  But CentOS 5.6
> is merely RHEL 5.6 with RedHat's branding removed (so that it can
> be released open-source); thus, what John says about RHEL's
> ancientness arguably applies here too, even though the CentOS
> release itself is very recent.  They're working on CentOS 6
> (corresponding to RHEL 6), but no release date has been
> announced, that I could find.
> 
> As John observes, no other distro of note is still stuck at 2.4.

So CentOS concerns me a bit. However, 5.6 is just a security/bugfix
update from the 5.0 series. And if you look here:
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/

It looks like CentOS failed to strip Red Hat from their docs... Anyway,
that says "Copyright (c) 2006" and "Revision 5.0.0-19 is from Thu Jan 23
2007". So at best the 5.x series is 4 years old, and likely to be 5
years old.

Following this thread:
http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=29147&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=560

I found some late posts that Scientific Linux already has v6 out the
door (which is another mostly-rebuilt-RHEL distribution). And as of last
week, there was still some polish being done on the 5.6 series, but they
should be switching soon to the v6 series.

So Real-Soon-Now, for whatever that means. And given that bzr-2.4 final
is only scheduled for a few months from now, I think we're on perfectly
reasonable footing. It isn't like CentOS v6 or RHEL v6 are going to have
bzr-2.4 in them. They probably only have 2.1/2 anyway.

John
=:->


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