[Biopython] Phasing out support for Python 2.4?

[Peter]

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?

Please send any replies just to the main mailing list
(not the announcement list).

Thanks,

Peter