[Biopython] Phasing out support for Python 2.4?

[Martin Mokrejs]

Hi Peter,
  I don't get this point much. What is the problem stating that with
python 2.5+ one does not need to install an extra dependency while
for 2.4 one needs _two_ modules?
  I don't think I want BioSQL nor sqlite so why would I have to upgrade.
Would the requirement be in python language syntax incompatibility then
I would NOT object, but in this situation ...
Martin

Peter wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Biopython currently supports Python 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6
> (and seems to work on the current Python 2.7 alpha),
> but it is probably time to start phasing out support for
> Python 2.4.
> 
> Reasons for encouraging Python 2.5+ include the
> built in support for sqlite3 (which we can use in the
> BioSQL wrapper) and ElementTree (which we use
> for the new phyloXML parser), both of which must
> currently be manually installed for Python 2.4.
> 
> There are other technical advantages, see this
> thread on our development mailing list:
> http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/biopython-dev/2010-January/007236.html
> 
> We'd aim to follow our usual deprecation procedure,
> so at least two releases and one year before actually
> dropping support for Python 2.4. At that point older
> Linux distributions which ship with Python 2.4
> probably won't be supported anyway.
> 
> Is dropping support for Python 2.4 going to cause
> anyone a problem?