Python 2.7 for Maverick

[Scott Kitterman]

"Barry Warsaw" <barry at canonical.com> wrote:

>On Jun 15, 2010, at 06:23 PM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>
>>What's the rationale for it as default instead of as another supported
>>version?
>
>Scott, I know you're aware of the new features in Python 2.7, but for others,
>they are outlined here:
>
>http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.7.html
>
>Many I think are useful enough to want to adopt Python 2.7.  Tops on my list
>would be:
>
>* Many improvements to the unittest module.
>* Silencing of DeprecationWarnings that aren't of interest to end users, and
>  the addition of $PYTHONWARNINGS to better control this (an outgrowth of our
>  work to port Launchpad to Py2.6 and the associated problems).
>* runpy support for packages
>* argparse module in the stdlib.
>* dictionary views
>* set literals, dict and set comprehensions
>* multiple context managers for with statements
>* auto-numbering in str.format()
>* better garbage collector performance for long running servers
>
>New features aside, I think defaulting to Python 2.7 now helps us set the path
>for Python support in the next LTS.  Regardless of which Python 3 we'll have,
>or whether we can even default to Python 3, we know that we'll be supporting
>Python 2.7 at the next LTS.  And upstream, Python 2.7 will have a much longer
>maintenance schedule because it will (almost certainly) be the last Python 2.
>
>Clearly, if we hit a roadblocking incompatibility for Python 2.7 then we
>should support but not default to it for Maverick.  Ultimately we won't know
>until we do it because I think just supporting it (and not defaulting to it)
>might help developers but won't give us much of a sense of how stable it is
>for our Python 2 stack.
>
I went through making a new Python version the default in the same release cycle in which it was introduced (with 2.6).  It might be doable for main, but not for Universe.  

If this were the cycle before the LTS,  I'd be all for pushing hard to reduce LTS risk, but it's not.  There's no reason to kill ourselves now to make it default in 10.10.

Python 2.7 can be available and supported for Python people that want the new features. For 10.10, I think that's enough. 

Scott K