[Twisted-Python] A Proposal for reducing the burden of developing on Twisted by dropping Python 2 support

[Werner Thie]

+1

Werner

On 3/25/19 07:22, Scott, Barry wrote:
> On Monday, 25 March 2019 10:15:22 GMT Amber Brown wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Since the Python 2 EOL date is rapidly approaching, I thought it was
>> time we consider dropping Python 2 support.
>>
>> I personally find that Python 2 compat adds a huge amount of overhead
>> when working on and maintaining Twisted, and think that with the current
>> maintainer availability, dropping it sooner rather than later would have
>> a beneficial effect on how much work we spend on shims/compat,
>> complexity, and our ability to ship new features, as well as onboarding
>> people who are interested in the project, but have no interest (or
>> experience!) in Python 2.7.
>>
>> It is basically summed up by doing a feature freeze on an agreed-upon
>> version of Twisted, that will be the last version released for 2.7. It
>> would be abnormal in that it would get security fixes (our current
>> policy is to only release them for current versions) and critical
>> bugfixes, but would otherwise be frozen.
>>
>> One of my rationales is that from some analysis of PyPI download
>> statistics, the vast majority of Python 2 users are using old versions
>> of Twisted, while nearly all our Python 3 users are on the latest
>> version. As such, I believe freezing a version that will get security
>> updates but no new features would not be a massive loss to those stuck
>> on Python 2 for whatever reason.
>>
>> Twisted's compatibility policy would still apply, ensuring that Python
>> 2/3 compatible software using Twisted would be able to use the older
>> Twisted version on Python 2, and the newer version on Python 3, as you
>> would usually expect.
>>
>> You can find the proposal here, in this handy-dandy Google Doc:
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S4CGgZC09blLIdk3Zo7wBa75A9_JuuH_3akkyjN0
>> lik/edit
>>
>> Comments are welcome, as well as which timeline seems reasonable.
> We are stuck on python2.7 for the foreseeable future and you will not see us 
> in the PyPi stats. We download your release tar ball and build an RPM from it.
> We also have to build python2.7 our selves as we are stuck on Centos 6.8.
>
> Having a legacy twisted with critical bugs and security fixes would work for 
> us.
>
> Barry
>
>
>
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