The looming Python 3(000) monster

[Michael DeHaan]

James Antill wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-12-06 at 18:30 -0500, Michael DeHaan wrote:
>
>   
>> Not defined in older versions of python however, hence the need to 
>> branch code, hence a problem with EPEL supporting code.
>>     
>
>  True, 2.5.x and earlier won't be compatible. Which means that
> RHEL-5/CentOS-5 python won't be compatible with any code that uses this
> feature of py3k and/or 2.6.x (via. the from future import).
>
>  This is _far_ from unprecedented though, lack of decorators and/or
> yield alone makes the python in RHEL-4/CentOS-4 incompatible for any
> modern development. And I've had to upgrade boxes because of this, and
> told a lot of people "Yeh, any recent yum just isn't going to work
> there ... sucks".
>   

That's a backwards compatibility example.

I'm talking about a break in forwards compatibility.
>  This wasn't the end of the world then, and didn't mean we wanted/needed
> to hold python back in Fedora. I don't see anything materially different
> now.
>
>   

(A) This is a different issue than the above.   This is equivalent to 
older Python targetting code not being run on the /new/, not newer code 
running on the old.
Completely different problem.

(B) Nobody said the world was ending :)