[Twisted-Python] SURVEY: For Twisted users, please answer

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

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On Wednesday, April 23, 2003, at 12:54 AM, Moshe Zadka wrote:

> On Debian woody (stable), Python/GTK+ is available only for Python 2.1.
> This means woody users would not be able to use the GUI clients in 
> Twisted
> (some of which are GTK+-based). In addition, other libraries which 
> specific
> developers might wish to use might be unavailable for Python 2.2. I can
> probably conjure up a list of such libraries.

Python/GTK+ is only necessary for two arguably experimental portions of 
Twisted - im and manhole.  I think that it is acceptable to remove 
support in Debian woody for these, considering that more substantial, 
stable portions of Twisted (e.g. Conch, and twisted.web SSL) don't 
work, since they require libraries that are missing on woody.  Future 
GTK+ work is going to be using GTK2 anyway, considering that it is 
vastly more stable for the kinds of things we want to do, most of which 
involve displaying large, scrolling blocks of text.

PyQT is technically in Debian, but the version in Woody isn't very 
useful, and I haven't heard from anyone using it with Twisted.

There are no third-party programs that support Debian woody which 
require GTK to be working with Twisted.

As to other libraries - my primary concern was with database drivers 
which may have been incompatible with Python-2.2.  However, it appears 
that all DB-API compatible drivers that come with Woody have both 
python-2.1 and python-2.2 versions.

I've just spent the last few weeks working without the 2.1-support 
constraint, and I can see why all the Twisted developers have been 
clamoring for 2.2 :-).  While I have some concern that moving along 
with rearrangements of Python's basic semantics encourages the 
development of useless, whiz-bang infrastructure, the fact is that the 
new object model is substantially more amenable to necessary features 
like those implemented in twisted.python.components and 
twisted.python.reflect.

The results of this survey appear to indicate that most Twisted users 
are not using Python-2.1, and those that are plan to stop in the near 
future.  Also, as far as I can tell, nobody on the development team 
uses Python 2.1 any more, and so test failures related to 2.1 
incompatibilities are always caught after the fact.

I think it would improve our development speed and the general attitude 
of the team, so I propose we cut over to 2.2 immediately.  For the 
reasons I gave above, I don't think the GTK situation is important 
enough to prevent this.  If anyone else would like to give reasons for 
not going ahead with this, please speak now or forever hold your peace 
:)

(This does not mean "everybody check in 2.2-only code".  It means "get 
ready to check in 2.2-only code".  I will hopefully announce open 
season on 2.2 features later this week.)
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