Please stop saying your software supports Python if it's only V2
PG - any chance you can post this to the front page?
If you have any sort of database or other product that includes Python drivers, please stop saying your product supports Python if you only support Python 2.
Python is now Python 3. I'm tired of software that says it supports Python, only to find out it supports the old, outdated version of Python. Amazingly this is happening even for new software like RethinkDB.
If you don't support Python 3, then it's no longer okay to say "Python is supported". Your software does NOT support Python.
You could instead say something like "We support legacy versions of Python but we do not support current versions of Python".
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"The current production versions are Python 2.7.3 and Python 3.3.0."
"Python" is widely considered to be python2, not python3 (yet). Deal with it.
Are you kidding me? You want the fast lane to the front page because you're upset that people's projects only have Python 2 support when you expect Python 3? Is this some kind of joke?
Could you at least tell us what specifically set you off there?
I've started by asking people heavily involved in the Python world. Statistically irrelevant, but the majority of answers I've got back were:
1. production systems: 2.7.x
2. old maintenance mode: 2.6
3. some 3.x
I've also tried asking the PSF, hoping that they might have more data. They pointed out to the download page:
> "The current production versions are Python 2.7.3 and Python 3.3.0"
A statistically relevant survey would need to take in consideration:
1. what major Linux distributions include as the default Python version
2. what versions hosting providers support by default
3. the percentage of Python libraries that work with Python 2.7 and Python 3.3
A lot of effort would be needed to pull together all these details, but I think the Python community would benefit from having this data around (even if some might find this detrimental to the advance of Python)
Although I have to admit I'm annoyed by this versioning problem myself. I find myself wasting a lot of time sorting out versioning issues of packages/frameworks I'd like to use.
Don't get confused by version numbers. Yes, Python 3's got a bigger major number, but for now that is nothing more than a reflection of Python's ambitions. The reality is that Python's currently in a period of transition, and during the course of that transition the Python name will have to be shared by two separate-but-related software products.
If you'd like to fund the porting effort of the protobuf library to Python 3, shoot me an email to [email protected] and we'll see if we can arrange something. Otherwise, I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait :)
I'll have a poke at the problem, where's the best place to ping you if I've got an rc for python3 protobuf?