Re: Rewriting pkglint in a portable language

["J. Lewis Muir" <jlmuir%imca-cat.org@localhost>]

On 3/24/16 7:59 AM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:
> Not to start a language war but that is totally unfair about Python.
> Python bends over backwards to be backward compatible with previous
> versions.  Even when they make a major change (e.g. 2.x => 3.x) they
> allow for slow and careful upgrades.  Version 2.7 is going to be
> supported till at least 2020 and many changes in 3.x will work in 2.7.
> If there is an incompatible change you can still run new code under
> 2.7 by importing from the future.  It's a really clean upgrade path.

Hi, D'Arcy!

I disagree on the topic of porting code from 2 to 3 (as I expressed in
[1]).  Also, I think you might be giving too much credit to the Python
developers on the 2 to 3 conversion: when Python 3 came out, the Python
developers didn't say Python 2 would be supported until 2020; that came
later.  And the Python developers are very clear in [2] that Python 2.7
is the end of the Python 2 line of development, there will never be a
Python 2.8, and the upgrade path from Python 2.7 is to Python 3.

> My short experience with Java suggests that you may be right there.

Would you be willing share what was not backward compatible?

Regards,

Lewis

[1] http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-pkg/2016/03/24/msg016641.html
[2] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0404/