[portgroups] Python

[Richard L. Hamilton]

One might wonder at the number of python version ports.  I suspect a couple of things that I don't know without a lot of digging would provide some perspective:
* the OS version of python on the earliest OS MacPorts supports, and on each subsequent OS version
* the python versions specifically required by various other ports (not just x.y or later, and esp. not just 2.y or 3.y)
and maybe
* the degree of change policy for python minor versions (impacting not only the previous point, but and non-MacPorts software that might be dependent on a particular version)
(as the recent openssl switchover showed, some software has backwards compatibility issues with what are supposedly minor version changes)

Depending on the results, with some effort, it might be possible to drop some of the intermediate versions. But only if a later suitable (for everything dependent on it) version is possible on every supported OS. And it would mean bumping portfiles, and rebuilding everything depending on dropped versions.  It probably wouldn't be worth the bother, and given all the constraints, might only get rid of a few versions.

Compared to some of the even larger ports, or certain ports that do exhaustive optimization, python versions aren't _that_ slow to build, so the only major gain would be space.

> On Sep 12, 2019, at 17:32, Bjarne D Mathiesen <macintosh at mathiesen.info> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Christopher Jones wrote:
>> 
>> Depends what you are thinking of by ‘officially support’.
>> 
>> We have ports for
>> 
>> python26 @2.6.9_7 (lang)
>> python27 @2.7.16_2 (lang)
>> 
>> python32 @3.2.6_8 (lang)
>> python33 @3.3.7_3 (lang)
>> python34 @3.4.10_2 (lang)
>> python35 @3.5.7_1 (lang)
>> python36 @3.6.9_1 (lang)
>> python37 @3.7.4_1 (lang)
>> 
>> However, that does not mean each of the various ‘py’ ports support all of the above..
> 
> I know that.
> I'm limiting myself to only bothering with python27 & python37
> 
> I could possibly without any problems just plug the rest in with a good
> chance of success; but one of the python program I've made as Portfile
> for says : 3.3 and above
> 
>>> On 12 Sep 2019, at 9:09 pm, Bjarne D Mathiesen <macintosh at mathiesen.info> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Which versions of Python do macports still officially support ?!?
>>> 
> 
> I've had a bit of discussion about supporting python27 in
>    https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/5256
> and took at look at the python-1.0.tcl file
> 
> Now, python-1.0.tcl
>    - sets python27 as the default
>      with IMHO is a bad idea as it's been on the death-bed for several
>      years now; and is being EOLed in 2020
>    - there's still a lot of py24 & py25 cruft in there
> so I was thinking about
>    1 setting python37 as the default
>    2 removing all the py24 & py25 stuff
> 
> Possibly, also EOL / obsolete python3[2-5] & python26
> 
> -- 
> Bjarne D Mathiesen
> Korsør ; Danmark ; Europa
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