[Twisted-Python] [RFC] Drop support for Python 3.5 sometime after May 2021?

[Glyph]

> On May 19, 2020, at 1:52 AM, Richard van der Hoff <richard at matrix.org> wrote:
> 
> On 16/05/2020 06:56, Glyph wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 15, 2020, at 8:40 PM, Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc at crodrigues.org <mailto:rodrigc at crodrigues.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Maybe it would be OK to do one more release of Twisted and announce that as the last release supporting Python 3.5, before
>>> dropping support?  
>> 
>> Yeah; whenever we drop a Python version we should always support at least one more release, so that people have some notice before they lose access to the next set of security updates.
>> 
>> Any 3.5 users on this list who would want to postpone it longer than this?
>> 
> Sadly we have an important customer whose servers run debian oldstable, which means we need to stay compatible with 3.5 until we can persuade them to upgrade, and it's taken a couple of years to get them off python 2.7...
> 
> I'm not sure that should necessarily affect your plans, but I doubt we're alone in this situation.
> 

I guess one thing I'm curious about is why your application would need to be installed along with the system Python on those OS versions?  It seems like a packaging strategy that ignored the fossilized versions that Debian packages with the system and just built its own Python would be more reliable and allow for upgrading at least most Python dependencies well beyond what the system would allow by policy.  Or, for that matter, why not just run in a Docker container?

Matrix is a pretty big user, and so in some sense I care about this specific case, but I also find the general question interesting, because I have difficulty reasoning about how long to support older versions of things in the modern application packaging environment where containers, virtualenvs, and associated tooling make it possible to effectively ignore the base environment. When & why do you have to pay attention to it?

-glyph

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