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To: python-list@python.org
From: Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu>
Subject: Re: Martijn Faassen: The Call of Python 2.8
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 15:29:41 -0400
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On 4/15/2014 7:33 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
> Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> writes:
>
>> 3.4.0 was released a month ago with Windows and Mac installers and
>> source for everything else. I know Ubuntu was testing the release
>> candidate so I presume it is or will very soon have 3.4 officially
>> available. Since there was a six month series of alpha, beta, and
>> candidate releases, with an approximate final release data, any
>> distribution that wanted to be up to date also could be.
>
> Those assertions assume that:
>
> * operating systems have stable releases every few months; and
>
> * they have a zero-length process to get a stable release of Python into
>    the stable OS release; and
>
> * the user is always running the latest stable OS version immediately
>    after its release.

No, I was not talking about replacing the system python. Only about 
having a .rpm or .deb or whatever available to make an alternate 
install. My comments are a response to someone saying he could not use 
Python3 because his system only had ancient 3.2 available and he needed 
to use a module that requires 3.3. If he was telling the truth, this 
strikes me as ridiculous.

> When, in reality, the OS team will need quite a long time to ensure the
> stable Python release works smoothly with all of the rest of the OS;

For a standalone non-system install, I cannot imagine what you are 
talking about. CPython is primarily developed on Linux. It is continuous 
tested on multiple buildbots that include several *nix and in particular 
linux distributions (https://www.python.org/dev/buildbot/). I believe it 
more stable on linux than anything else, certainly more than on Windows. 
CPython x.y.0 is released after a month of candidate testing. When it is 
released, it definitely works on multiple linux distributions, or it 
would not be released.

I believe distutils has options to create some package manager bundles 
(.rpm, .deb?, ???) and that we once hosted such on the site on day 1, 
along with a windows binary. I believe we no longer do because linux 
distributions proliferated and said that they would rather host python 
bundles in their own package manager systems.


-- 
Terry Jan Reedy