python24-26 policy

[Joshua Root]

On 2012-12-9 13:44 , Ned Deily wrote:
> Certainly it's up to any project to determine what they want to support.  
> Keep in mind, though, that the older releases, like 2.4.x and 2.5.x, 
> were retired or in security-fix-only mode prior to the release of 
> current OS X and Xcode versions, so the last upstream versions are 
> missing fixes added to current Python releases to handle newer 
> compilers, deprecated APIs, 64-bit support etc.   Apple itself has been 
> burned by that, i.e. the broken system Python 2.5 currently shipped with 
> 10.8.  You'll need to continue to maintain and test your own patches to 
> provide support for obsolete versions on newer OS releases.

Well, that's a different issue. Certainly if older versions of python
stop building on newer OS releases, that's a good reason to remove those
versions from MacPorts. Probably not until we drop support in base for
those OS releases where it does work, though.

Hopefully anyone who really needs 2.4 or 2.5 is aware of the issues with
them. (I know there are, or at least were, a few such people, because
they protested the removal of python24.)

- Josh