[Biopython-dev] Preparing to drop Python 3.3 support

[Peter Cock]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Dear Biopythoneers,
>
> Do any of you still use Python 3.3?
>
> Biopython currently supports and is regularly tested on Python 3.3, 3.4,
> 3.5 (the current latest release) and also Python 2.6 and 2.7 as well.
>
> (I'm talking about the main C version of Python from python.org here,
> we also test under PyPy and Jython).
>
> As of Biopython 1.66, we have deprecated support for Python 2.6.
> Based on http://biopython.org/wiki/Deprecation_policy we'll still
> support Python 2.6 for Biopython 1.67 and in principle any other
> releases we make up to October 2016.
>
> For the next release, Biopython 1.67, I would like to deprecate support
> for Python 3.3. This has various codec fixes which will let us remove
> some workarounds in our code, and comes with pip which will make
> installation simpler in the long run (Python 2.7.9 onwards also has
> the ensurepip module).
>
> Phasing out support for Python 2.6 and 3.3 is in line with other Scientific
> Python packages like matplotlib, Bokeh, pandas, and (or more direct
> relevance), numpy:
>
> https://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2015-December/074331.html
>
> Regards,
>
> Peter

I've made this change on the repository now,
https://github.com/biopython/biopython/commit/d183e6ed5e23dd6399759c0f73011e84ebe03954

Once again, comments from anyone still using Python 3.3 would be
welcome.

Thanks,

Peter