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[Python-porting] Python 2.4 v/s Python3.2

Shane Kerr shane at isc.org
Thu Aug 9 17:06:18 CEST 2012 
Vikas,

On Thursday, 2012-08-09 01:52:08 -0700, 
Vikas Choudhary <vikas.choudhary at qlogic.com> wrote: 
> Why we should go to 3.2 version and why we should not stick to 2.4

As other people have said, Python 2.4 is quite old. Let me comment
rather on the issue of Python 2.7 vs. Python 3.x.

We started BIND 10 about 3.5 years ago and the wisdom at that time was
"for new projects use Python 3", so we did. It has caused us a little
pain, not so much because of difficulty with the language or missing
libraries, but rather because Python 3 was missing from a lot of
Unix distributions at that time.

Since then, Python 3 is available as a package for all major
distributions, and has started to become the default (Arch Linux
already has done this). However, if you are targeting "enterprise"
systems, then Python 2 may make more sense. These tend to stay around
for years and years, and never upgrade. Ever. (*)

Basically, I advise:

                Go with the latest Python 3,
         unless you have a specific need for Python 2

--
Shane

(*) Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a 13 year support cycle... code from
    2007 will be supported until 2020! If you don't think that is
    weird, consider that the Linux kernel 13 years ago was 2.2.11 and
    that Python itself was at version 1.5...
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