Python 3.1 released

http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.1/

by uggedal • 17 years ago

89 21 17 years ago

whughes• 17 years ago

Is anyone here actually using Python 3 or at least planning a migration? I am wondering when the fallover is finally going to happen if no one takes the initiative.

mcav3• 17 years ago

It's a big waiting game; any projects that have dependencies on other python projects usually need to wait until their dependencies are ready first. Hopefully the number of projects that are ready will reach critical mass, and it'll kickstart a larger migration. It might take a while, though.

At least with GitHub et. al., it's a lot easier nowadays to maintain a fork of a dependency for Py3k compatibility (or to keep a 2.x branch, for that matter).

EDIT: The primary projects I use are Pylons and Eventlet. Pylons has a roadmap to migrate to 3.0; not sure about Eventlet.

uggedal• 17 years ago

Take Django, one of the most successful Python projects. They were recently debating whether to drop Python 2.3 support or not. RHEL 4 shipped Python 2.3 and Redhat supports it until February 29, 2012. Se this thread for detailed reasoning: http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/msg/0888b1c...

In other words, we won't see any major projects dropping 2.x support in the foreseeable future.

mcav3• 17 years ago

Right, but that's a different question. It's possible to do one of three things:

    1. Stay on 2.x
    2. Move to 3.x
    3. Simultaneously support 2.x yet also move to 3.x

Hopefully, even projects like Django could move to 3.x for new releases while supporting 2.x on an older release. That's as close to win-win as you could get.

drawkbox3• 17 years ago

This is one big problem with Python libs and evolution of the versioning. The best default support you can get is 2.4 even at places like Joyent due to Redhat and RHEL and other package systems. It is unfortunate.

I was hoping stuff like Django, SQL Alchemy, Google AppEngine and even Unladen Swallow to focus more on Python 3 btu there is so much vested in older versions. If everyone could just get to 2.6 or 2.7 at least then new frameworks and old stuff can run for a while.

But python evolution is a bit held back by situations like this. That is one problem that Ruby, .NET etc dont' have and as a Pythonista for the last few years, this is concerning.

Google AppEngine may be adding python version support soon. There should be an easier way to have parallel python libs and switch between them per app.

Hopefully this is a focus soon.

zain• 17 years ago

One of the Python GSoC projects this year is a Python 3to2 tool that lets you convert Python 3.0 code to work on 2.x. Once this is implemented, the major projects (like Django) can switch over to 3.0 without having to put work into 2.x branches, and that should provide critical mass for normal developers to switch over too.

Here's the proposal: http://socghop.appspot.com/student_project/show/google/gsoc2...

_cbsz• 17 years ago

topic in #python on Freenode says: "It's too early to use Python 3.x"

dgallagher• 17 years ago

Anyone know what version of Python Mac OS X Snow Leopard will ship with come September?

mattyb• 17 years ago

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2009-June/71577...

ken• 17 years ago

From some quick searching, a couple people say it's 2.6.1, and at least one person says both 2.6 and 3.

granular• 17 years ago

Possibly of interest: Here's a regularly-updated plot by Georg Brandl showing the number of Python 3 packages in the PyPI: http://dev.pocoo.org/~gbrandl/py3pkgs.png

kylec• 17 years ago

One thing that I don't really understand is why not adopt a new syntax to allow users to specify the version of Python a file should be imported and run under. Just have the interpreter pick 2.X by default, but if there's something like

    ##python-3.0

as the first line, then load the file with the 3.0 interpreter. This way you can intermix 2.X libraries with an otherwise 3.X project without having to deal with the whole 2to3 thing.

pcc2• 17 years ago

In a *nix environment, set the shebang line of the file to point to the precise interpreter you want to use. Any imports that file makes will be from the /usr/lib/pythonX.Y for that version of the interpreter. (In order to get the library installed into that path in the first place, it must have been done via that version of the interpreter specifically, so its quite possible to keep 3.x and 2.x versions of the same library quite isolated).

Of course imports can also come from the local dir, via pythonpath and the various manipulations thereof (buildout, virtualenvs etc), so there are a few degrees of freedom via which to manage things.

May be worth pointing out that a file and all its imports will only be running under one interpreter, so a file running on 3.x (via shebang line, say), will not be able to use a 2.x library (even if placed in the correct path) where the code of that library is fundamentally not 3.x compatible.

pkrumins• 17 years ago

Python 3100 :)

Python 3.1 released

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