Re: [RFC] Adding Python as a possible language and it's usage

Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com>:
> I don't see any mention of avoiding dict comprehensions (not supported
> until 2.7, so unusable on RHEL6/CentOS6 and SLES 11).

That is correct. The HOWTO introduction does say that its techniques
won't guarantee 2.6 compatibility.  That would have been a great deal more
difficult - some 3.x syntax backported into 2.7.2 makes a large difference
here.

In practice, no deployment of reposurgeon or src or doclifter or any
of the other polyglot Python code I maintain has tripped over this, or
at least I'm not seeing issue reports about it.

Python devteam support for Python 2.6 terminated in 2013.

> I maintain it's easy to unwittingly use a feature (such as dict
> comprehensions) which works fine on your machine, but aren't supported
> by all versions you intend to support. Regular testing with the oldest
> version is needed to prevent that (which was the point I was making).

Yes. This is why reposurgeon, doclifter, and cvs-fast-export both have
regression-test suites that exercise all Python code under both 2 and
3, a practice I strongly recommend.

Python 2.7 is scheduled for EOL in 2020.  My plan is to retain 2.7 support
in my code until 2022.

I report that my practices are keeping the frequency of Python port
defects I hear about to zero.  I understand that GCC may have different
constraints.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

My work is funded by the Internet Civil Engineering Institute: https://icei.org
Please visit their site and donate: the civilization you save might be your own.