[Biopython-dev] Updating Biopython requirements wording to recommend Python 3

[Peter Cock]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 6:45 PM, Vincent Davis <vincent at vincentdavis.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 10:29 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I expect plenty of Biopython users will still want to use Python 2.7
>> for some time yet. Some time later on, a maintenance fork of
>> Biopython just for Python 2.7 might make sense if there is interest
>> in continuing that even after we drop Python 2.7 for new features.
>
>
> README Proposal
>
> We currently recommend using Python 3.5 from http://www.python.org.
> Python 2.7 support continues in the same code base as 3.5. In the
> future (2016) development for Python 2.7 may be forked from the
> main Biopython development branch and receive primarily bug fix
> support until 2020 inline with Python 2.7 support.
> Python 2.6 support will be declared  obsolete in the next release
> (1.66) of Biopython and deprecated in (1.67).

I'm not comfortable promising anything as far ahead as 2020 -
even forecasting a few years ahead will be hard for many of us.

But we might as well declare Python 2.6 deprecated in the
imminent Biopython 1.66 release:

https://github.com/biopython/biopython/commit/ab5915977b091275ff90de98d8d11d17488ec225

That commit also replaces the old recommendation of Python 2.6
with suggesting Python 3.5, but I do not consider the current
wording final.

Out of interest, for those of you on the biopython-dev list, what
is your current default or main Python version/implementation?
I'm wondering what the split is amongst our main contributors.

[Our cluster is running CentOS release 6.7 (Final) which still
has Python 2.6.6 as its default, but I tend to use my own
copies of Python installed from source under $HOME]

Peter