From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Eric S. Raymond" Subject: Re: [PATCH] Third try at documenting command integration requirements. Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:56:19 -0500 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Message-ID: <20121127175618.GA11845@thyrsus.com> References: <20121126053557.E56434065F@snark.thyrsus.com> <7vzk24qgjx.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> <20121126214134.GA1713@thyrsus.com> <50B4A8E1.7050801@alum.mit.edu> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org To: Michael Haggerty X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Tue Nov 27 18:56:39 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TdPOg-0004RX-Dk for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Tue, 27 Nov 2012 18:56:38 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932083Ab2K0R4X (ORCPT ); Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:56:23 -0500 Received: from static-71-162-243-5.phlapa.fios.verizon.net ([71.162.243.5]:56838 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755514Ab2K0R4W (ORCPT ); Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:56:22 -0500 Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 4C79F40661; Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:56:19 -0500 (EST) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <50B4A8E1.7050801@alum.mit.edu> X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Michael Haggerty : > OK, now let's discuss *which* minimum Python version that git should > support in the hypothetical new world... By all means! > It would be a shame to leave RHEL 5 users behind if Python is used to > implement important git functionality. Python 2.4 is missing some of > Python's shiny new features, but still quite OK. What features would > you miss the most if we were to target Python 2.4 instead of 2.6? Off the top of my head...the 'with' statement, the conditional expression, and built-in JSON support. Other developers would be likely to kick about the string format() method; personally I'm cheerfully old-school about that. I agree that 2.4 is still quite OK. I'm a little concerned that dropping that far back might store up some transition problems for the day we decide to make the jump to Python 3. On the other hand, I think gating features on RHEL5 might be excessively cautious. According to [1], RHEL will red-zone within 30 days if it hasn't done so already ([1] says "Q4"). And RHEL6 (with Python 2.6) has been shipping for two years. Policy suggestion: we aim to stay friendly for every version of RHEL that is still in Support 1. I doubt anyone will code anything critical in Python before Dec 31st - I'm certainly not planning to! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux RHEL5 is going -- Eric S. Raymond