From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: esr@thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: Python version auditing followup Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:34:11 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <20121220143411.BEA0744105@snark.thyrsus.com> To: git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Thu Dec 20 15:34:54 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 1TlhD0-0006eW-02 for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:34:50 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751324Ab2LTOed (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:34:33 -0500 Received: from static-71-162-243-5.phlapa.fios.verizon.net ([71.162.243.5]:35515 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751116Ab2LTOeb (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:34:31 -0500 Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id BEA0744105; Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:34:11 -0500 (EST) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Most of the Python scripts in the distribution are small and simple to audit, so I am pretty sure of the results. The only place where I have a concern is the git_helpers library; that is somewhat more complex and I might have missed a dependency somewhere. Whoever owns that should check my finding that it should run under 2.4 That was the first of three patches I have promised. In order to do the next one, which will be a development guidelines recommend compatibility back to some specific version X, I need a policy decision. How do we set X? I don't think X can be < 2.4, nor does it need to be - 2.4 came out in 2004 and eight years is plenty of deployment time. The later we set it, the more convenient for developers. But of course by setting it late we trade away some portability to older systems. In previous discussion of this issue I recommended X = 2.6. That is still my recommendation. Thoughts, comments, objections? -- Eric S. Raymond In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the "collective" right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis. -- Stephen P. Halbrook, "That Every Man Be Armed", 1984