[Biopython-dev] Python 2.3 support

[Brad Chapman]

Hi Peter;

> As we've been warning for the last couple of releases, Biopython 1.50
> should be the last release to officially support Python 2.3.  No one
> has complained yet, but they may not have noticed. I suspect there may
> be people out there using a local Biopython installation on an old
> Linux/Unix computer where the system Python is rather old. For
> Biopython 1.50 I added a warning to setup.py when run on Python 2.3 so
> that may get more attention.

Are we getting a lot of feedback that we need to keep supporting these
old versions? 2.3 was released in 2003, 2.4 in 2004, and 2.5 in 2006.
This means people who need anything prior to 2.5 haven't updated in over
3 years. I understand the problem of non-responsive sysadmins and what
not. However, we only have so many cycles for testing and coding; is it
worthwhile spending some on these problems?

One of the nice selling points of Python is that it's a dynamic language,
and I like using new features of the language as much as anyone.
Beyond the 2/3 split, it is very back compatible and I've never had
any problems moving even very large projects forward to new
versions.

Practically, I'd be for dropping 2.4 support in the next release and
being a bit more aggressive in general on moving upwards and onwards.

Brad