[Zope-dev] dropping Python 2.4 support in the Zope Toolkit?

[Martin Aspeli]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> What do people feel about dropping Python 2.4 support in the Zope 
> Toolkit? I.e. new releases of packages in the Zope Toolkit (handwave 
> vaguely as we *still* don't have a canonical list) only have to work in 
> Python 2.5 (and preferably 2.6), not Python 2.4 anymore.
> 
> (this won't affect Zope 3.4 or below)
> 
> One issue that came up recently was that .tgz releases to PyPI sometimes 
> break with Python 2.4 due to a bug in Python 2.4. Using --zip is a 
> workaround. And Plone currently depends on Python 2.4. Is it possible to 
> work around this by *also* uploading a zip if we discover there's a 
> problem with a package and it's pointed out there? If not, are there 
> other workarounds?
> 
> What do Zope 2 and Plone people in general think about moving to Python 
> 2.5 for the newer releases? I'll note we're shuffling around the 
> dependency structure so much in the Zope Toolkit it's unlikely 
> everything will remain compatible for that reason as well.

The Plone 3.x series will stay on Python 2.4 for a long time yet, so 
this would be very disappointing. I can understand it if the maintenance 
burden becomes large, or if there are compelling features of 2.5/2.6 
that we really want to make use of. The tgz issue seems like a pretty 
weak reason, though, especially since there are workarounds.

Martin

-- 
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who
want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book