Re: the state of python 2.7

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost> writes:

> On Tue, May 02, 2023 at 05:51:41PM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> A third question is the nature of any support for 2.7.  It has been a
>> really long time since 2.7 is EOL; the last code change included in a
>> release had a cutoff date of January 1, 2020.  It has been unmaintained
>> for 3 years
>
> For context NetBSD 9.0 is about as old and it's one of the tier-1
> platforms we're providing bulk builds for. Or well, is supposed to be -
> I haven't had time to monitor reports in a while.

I don't follow that at all.  The situations seem entirely different.

NetBSD 9 is the most recent formal release of NetBSD, and it is under
active maintenance.  The release of NetBSD 9.0 was February 14, 2020.
Yes, 9.1 was released in October 2020, but in theory all 9.x are ABI
compat and thus we are building packages for 9.0.  (I personally would
not mind if we did builds on the most recent maintenance release, and
told anyone having trouble that they should upgrade.  But I suspect that
is not your main point.)

At the rate we are going NetBSD 10.0 will likely be released some time
in 2023.  I'm going to pull August out of thin air, not because I
believe it, but because it makes the math easier.  So that's 3.5 years
after 9.0.  Thus 11.0 will likely be another 3.5 years later, and NetBSD
9 will therefore likely be maintained (but won't really be usable for
bloated software, just like 8) until February of 2027.

Python 2.7.0 was released on July 3, 2010.  The originally-announced EOL
date was 2015, and that was later extended to 2020.  Python 2.7 has been
formally EOL and actually unmaintained for three years.