Re: win32 dia with python

[Mike Dewhirst <miked dewhirst com au>]

Steffen Macke wrote:
> Mike,
>
> > Further to 2.2.3, is there a reason you have stayed with that version of
> > Python?
>
> I just looked at Hans' makefile. It seems to reference Python 2.2. For the time
> being I sticked to it. It would be good to get some feedback which Python
> version is the preferred one (Or should we package for different
> Python versions?)
> I just saw that Python 2.5 is released.

Steffen - yes I see that now. Must have happened yesterday.

I asked around and have no answers yet about versions. My personal 
feedback to you is that I will definitely move forward from 2.4 to 2.5.

If I am the only Dia-Python user, I would ask for 2.5. Maybe others can 
say something here.

Here is some research on the subject ...

Anthony Baxter, Python Release Manager, said last year at a Python 
presentation at the Open Source Developers Conference in Melbourne that 
2.5 will be the final 2.x Python before 3.0.

The Python language developers don't backport patches more than two 
versions. That means 2.3 and earlier versions are now frozen forever.

Guido van Rossum has said Python 3.0 is not a complete rewrite but 
Python developers may break backward compatibility where necessary to 
remove cruft from the language and keep it clean and simple. Because of 
this I predict they will maintain 2.5 indefinitely.

Here is what Guido has actually said ...

	"At this moment [18 August 2006], I hope to have a first alpha release 
out sometime in 2007; it may take another year after that (or more) 
before the first proper release, named Python 3.0.

	I expect that there will be parallel Python 2.x and 3.x releases for 
some time; the Python 2.x releases will continue for a longer time than 
the traditional 2.x.y bugfix releases. Typically, we stop releasing 
bugfix versions for 2.x once version 2.(x+1) has been released. But I 
expect there to be at least one or two new 2.x releases even after 3.0 
(final) has been released, probably well into 3.1 or 3.2. This will to 
some extend depend on community demand for continued 2.x support, 
acceptance and stability of 3.0, and volunteer stamina.

	It's quite possible that Python 3.1 and 3.2 will be released much 
sooner after 3.0 than has been customary for the 2.x series. The 3.x 
release pattern will stabilize once the community is happy with 3.x."

This came from PEP 3000 at http://www.python.org/dev/peps/

I think you will have Dia customers who will be using Python 2.5.x for a 
long time to come. I therefore think it is worthwhile advancing from 
2.2.3 to 2.5.0 skipping the versions in between. As I said earlier, 
Python dedication to backwards compatibility ought to make jumping 
straight to 2.5.0 quite painless for you. It might even run unchanged.

I hope this makes sense.

Regards

mike

> The new DLL (still Python 2.2 but linked against Dia 0.95-1) is available:
>
> http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dia-installer/dia-python-0.95.1-1.tar.bz2?download
>
> Sorry for the .tar.bz2 file. Upload of .zip file didn't work for some
> reason. You can use
> e.g. 7-Zip to extract the files.
>
> Regards,
>
> Steffen
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