Dropping support for Python 2.6 on Windows

[Siddharth Agarwal]

On 3/16/17 09:54, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> There is a brewing discussion about the future of Python 2.6 in 
> Mercurial. I'd like to start with what I think will be an easy 
> proposal: officially dropping support for 2.6 on Windows.

Sounds reasonable to me.

>
> First, I think dropping 2.6 on Windows doesn't really buy us anything 
> significant. 2.6 and 2.7 build with the same (ancient) Visual Studio 
> toolchain. So it isn't like 2.6 is holding us back on C primitives we 
> can use or anything. Also, I'm pretty sure none of the Mercurial on 
> Windows packages we (or others) distribute use Python 2.6. So I don't 
> think we save packagers any work.
>
> My main reason for dropping 2.6 on Windows is to get the policy change 
> out of the way.
>
> Supporting this proposal is the fact that (correct me if I'm wrong) 
> Mercurial with 2.6 on Windows is not tested nor widely used (see 
> previous point about no packages targeting it). The only way (I think) 
> people can get Mercurial running with 2.6 on Windows is if they 
> download the source and compile it locally (possibly via pip). I think 
> that's generally a small set of all Mercurial users on Windows and 
> Python 2.6 users are a sliver of that population.
>
> Furthermore, I'm not aware of anyone in the Mercurial project doing 
> Python 2.6 development on Windows. Linux and 2.6, yes. Windows and 
> 2.7, yes. But not 2.6 on Windows.
>
> If we can't adequately test and support Mercurial with Python 2.6 on 
> Windows, I argue it shouldn't be supported.
>
> My formal proposal is:
>
> a) establish a policy that Mercurial with Python 2.6 is not supported 
> on Windows starting in the 4.2 release
> b) setup.py and `hg` reject Python 2.6 on Windows
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mercurial-devel mailing list
> Mercurial-devel at mercurial-scm.org
> https://www.mercurial-scm.org/mailman/listinfo/mercurial-devel