[Chandler-dev] Python 2.5?

[Grant Baillie]

On 30 Nov, 2006, at 16:17, Heikki Toivonen wrote:

> Python 2.5 came out a little while ago. It is a fairly significant
> release, adding some nice new features in the language. AFAIK at least
> one feature would enable us to fix a repository bug. 2.5 is also
> significantly faster than 2.4. Finally, 2.5 contains some security  
> fixes
> that have never been ported to 2.4.
>
> I also believe that 2.5 included build changes which will make it
> possible to build it with the free Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express
> edition. Besides being free, I believe it produces slightly faster and
> better code than our current compiler.
>
> All good reasons for us to upgrade to 2.5 at the first opportunity.
>
> However, there are also downsides.

Have the issues with Twisted & Python 2.5 been resolved? e.g.

<http://glyf.livejournal.com/62308.html>

> My main gripe, as usual, is that it
> would once again push further the time when we could use the platform
> Python to run Chandler (at least on Linux).
>
> More information about Python 2.5 is here:
> http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5/
>
> So, there are some options available for us:
>
> 1) Upgrade and require 2.5
> 2) Upgrade to 2.5 but let Chandler still run with 2.4
>    - this would require some version dependent imports for files that
> wanted to use certain 2.5 features
> 3) Don't upgrade
>
> Personally I am slightly in favor of 2) because of the possibility of
> using the system Python on Linux. My second choice is 1).
>
> If we decide to upgrade, I think we should aim to do it in alpha5.

I'm not so keen on #2 ... it'd be too easy for developers to add 2.5  
dependence in their environments. Without 100% code test coverage,  
the resulting bugs could be hard to find. Also, it would require that  
all the projects we depend on work against both versions of python.

--Grant