Re: Python 3.5 EOL; when can require 3.6?

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 17/09/2020 16.55, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 04:10:55PM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
>> On 16/09/2020 16.00, Thomas Huth wrote:
>>> On 16/09/2020 14.30, Peter Maydell wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 at 08:43, Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>> We require Python 3.5.  It will reach its "end of life" at the end of
>>>>> September 2020[*].  Any reason not to require 3.6 for 5.2?  qemu-iotests
>>>>> already does for its Python parts.
>>> [...]
>>>> The default should be
>>>> "leave the version dependency where it is", not "bump the version
>>>> dependency as soon as we can".
>>>
>>> OTOH, if none of our supported build systems uses python 3.5 by default
>>> anymore, it also will not get tested anymore, so bugs might creep in,
>>> which will of course end up in a bad experience for the users, too, that
>>> still try to build with such an old version. So limiting the version to
>>> the level that we also test is IMHO very reasonable.
>>>
>>> Let's have a look at the (older) systems that we support and the python
>>> versions according to repology.org:
>>>
>>> - RHEL7 / CentOS 7 : 3.6.8
>>> - Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic) : >= 3.6.5
>>> - openSUSE Leap 15.0 : >= 3.6.5
>>> - OpenBSD Ports : >= 3.7.9
>>> - FreeBSD Ports : >= 3.5.10 - but there is also 3.6 or newer
>>> - Homebrew : >= 3.7.9
>>>
>>> ... so I think it should be fine to retire 3.5 nowadays.
>>
>> Sorry, I forgot to check Debian. If I got that right, Debian 9 still
>> uses Python 3.5 by default. So I guess that means we can not deprecate
>> Python 3.5 yet?
> 
> FWIW, Debian 9 EOL was July this year, if you only count the regular
> lifetime, not the LTS.

Do we support Debian LTS? ... If not, we should maybe add a proper
remark about that to our support policy...?

Also, some of our docker containers (tests/docker/dockerfiles/debian9*)
are still using Debian 9 and are now used in our Gitlab-CI for our MinGW
cross-compiler builds (I think also in the Shippable-CI, but I don't use
that, so not sure about that one) ... if we don't support Debian 9
anymore, we should update these to a newer version. Any volunteers?

 Thomas