[Zope-Coders] Re: test failures in TAL

[Martijn Faassen]

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> >>>>> "MF" == Martijn Faassen <faassen@vet.uu.nl> writes:
> 
>   >> The unicode doesn't have to work under python 1.5.2, it just
>   >> shouldn't break it more than it does now.
> 
>   MF> Yes, but why create a problem in trying to support 1.5.2 for new
>   MF> releases when so far nobody has spelled out a satisfactory
>   MF> reason? Is there some huge installed base of ParsedXML users
>   MF> that can't upgrade to Zope 2.4 but do want to upgrade their
>   MF> ParsedXML to new versions that I'm not aware of?
> 
> To answer your second question first: Yes.  In general, there are
> users/customers that have not migrated to Zope 2.4, but do need
> upgraded versions of several products (ZEO, ParsedXML, etc.).  There
> enough of them that we (Zope Corp.) are committed to supporting them.

> I expect that there are a couple of issues that come into play here:
> You're probably not aware of all the Zope users.  Maintaining
> compatibility with older of Zope/Python versions is probably less
> important for you personally.  But if you've got a very large
> production Zope site, upgrading could be a burden.

Obviously I'm not aware of all Zope users, or all ParsedXML users. I am
however pretty sure (from following the mailing lists and helping
in the development) that the installed base is likely to be orders of
magnitude smaller than, say, ZEO, and definitely a *lot* smaller than Zope.

I myself use XMLDocument, the predecessor to ParsedXML in a fairly large
production environment and thus am aware about upgrade issues.
XMLDocument is however not at all developed by ZC anymore, so obviously
I understand the upgrade problems.
 
For instance, it is likely less than 100, unless everybody is perfectly
happy with the thing and wouldn't subscribe to the zope-xml mailing list,
which has about a 100 subscribers not all of which use it.

So, as a counter argument I can come up with some contrived
analogy to Unix 'make'.  :)

Anyway, I'll stop arguing now and wait for the zope-xml reactions to
an informal poll. The few reactions I got are diverse so far, so we'll
see. Actual data will help us more than this pointless discussion (yes
I *know* one should be careful generally in upgrades!).

Regards,

Martijn