[Biopython-dev] Preparing for Biopython 1.67

[Peter Cock]

Dear Biopythoneers,

As is often the case, putting together the BOSC project update abstract
reminds me that we should also put out another Biopython release.
I'm a little embarrassed to realise it has been almost six month since
the Biopython 1.66 release in October 2015.

Since we always try to keep the master branch on GitHub in as stable
condition, I think we are OK to do the release next week.

Could you all take a moment to look over the NEWS entry and see if
there is anything note worthy not mentioned, anything is unclear, or if
we have overlooked any contributors:

https://github.com/biopython/biopython/blob/master/NEWS

I can probable make time to handle the release next week - but
would like to ask Ben Fulton to handle the Windows installers again
(particularly for Python 3.5 as I still don't have access to a suitable
machine for those).

Ben: Are you happy to do this, and do you have any preferences
or restrictions on your availability? (We can discuss this off list
if you like)

http://biopython.org/wiki/Building_a_release

At this point I don't propose to make any changes to our release
process, but am aware than NumPy is starting to release pre-compiled
builds as wheel files via PyPI. As our main dependency, and a compile
time dependency, this is something we should look at in future. Is
anyone interested in working on this? The goal would be a quick
painless "pip install biopython" without needing a compiler etc.

Note that in line with our deprecation policy, we deprecated support
for Python 2.6 with Biopython 1.66 (October 2015), so Biopython 1.67
will still support Python 2.6.  We're then planning to drop Python 2.6
in the first release after October 2016:

http://biopython.org/wiki/Deprecation_policy

Regards,

Peter