[Zope-Coders] Python Versions, Zope Versions, etc

[Jeffrey P Shell]

On Wednesday, October 9, 2002, at 04:14  PM, R. David Murray wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Chris Withers wrote:
>> This is Zope 2.7, what fishbowl should I be looking in?
>
> Hmm.  Good point.  I was thinking that if you follow z3 discussions
> you know 2.2 is required, and there *were* dicscussions of backporting
> z3 stuff to 2.7.  It is true, however, that this does not 
> *automatically*
> imply a 2.7-requires-2.2 outcome, I just assumed it would.  Assumptions
> are not good.  Nor can I remember if those backport discussions 
> happened
> on the z3 list or zope-dev.
>
> On the other hand, Papal edicts are papal edicts <grin>.
>
> I will say that there seems to have been a lack of transparency on
> 2.7.  Hopefully that will change now that 2.6 has been branched.

I'll again say - I thought one of the big reasons for the concurrent 
2.6 / 2.7 development mess was that the 'Support Python 2.2' project 
and 'Zope 2.7' were generally meant to be the same thing.  I guess 
that's changed now, but none of the fishbowl pages reflect exactly (or 
even approximately) what the plans are for Zope 2.6 or 2.7.  But, maybe 
I've just been too busy to keep up with the current states of things.

A problem that continues to pop up for Zope and Python version 
differences is that as new features and/or deprecations show up in 
Python, accidental checkins may occur where someone uses a new Python 
feature without even realizing the implications.  I guess we shouldn't 
only keep a copy of PEP 291 close at hand, but come up with some 
similar information documents for Zope as well - one that documents 
minimum Python version requirements for code expected to work with a 
certain version of Zope, and possibly a list of available or 
unavailable Zope features that go back to a certain point in time.

At least if a SOON to happen Zope release can run comfortably with a 
Python 2.2 release, I can finally use some of the 2.2 features in my 
own code.

[1] http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0291.html