Python 2.6 for Intrepid

[Andreas Schiefer]

Binary package hint: python

Python 2.6 is out now, and it would be great to have it in Intrepid.

Python 2.6 has many features of the upcoming Python3 (which is already in Intrepid as a Beta) and would help migrating to Python3 a lot

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

won't happen for intrepid (frozen). we will make a package available in a PPA.

[Markus Majer (mpathy)]

It was released on October 1st, 2008.

Please put it in the backports as soon as possible, as Andreas posted here, it's essential to have a recent Python version - perhaps the last one in the 2.x era - not only in the next release.

Python 2.6 has special features which helps people migrating to Python 3, that information was long known,

Also read:
http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.6.html

I think it will be a bad decision to switch from Python 2.5 to Python 3.

If this is not planned, and 9.04 will have Python 2.6 and 9.10 will have Python 3, as default, we get out of date at least.

So the best point to have Python 2.6 in was this release.

It was absolutely clear that it get released in the first days of October, so the planning could've started with the RCs and Betas since 6 months that nobody has to tell users something about "frozen"..

[Marek Kubica (leonidas)]

I don't see the problem with Ubuntu 8.10 shipping only Python 2.6. Migrating to a newer Python version is not that easy, take a look how long it took Debian or Gentoo to switch their default version to 2.5. For 2.6 Ubuntu 9.04 will be early enough, I'm sure there won't be a switch to Python 3.0 before Ubuntu 9.10. Maybe even later, but that depends less on Ubuntu but rather on the adaptation rate of the community. The faster they are 3.0 compatible, the earlier Ubuntu can use 3.0 as default. Still, 2.x will be around for quite some years.

I tried building a python2.6 package from the python2.5 sources (updated via uupdate), but it fails quite early due to changes in the Makefile targets, due to the new documentation and the custom patches fail to apply. So it's a bit of work to get it to build properly.

The only thing that is a bit of a pity is that the update-process was not started when the Python 2.6 alphas or betas came out (there was a Python 2.6 PPA of some alpha version by doko, but it was deleted). Then it would be easy to create PPAs immediately after the final release and/or upload them to Debian experimental (they are in freeze too).

[Alexandre Prokoudine (alexandre-prokoudine)]

@Matthias and where is that PPA? :)

[Andrew Antle (andrew-antle)]

Hello Alexandre,

https://launchpad.net/~doko/+archive/ppa

Matthias has 2.6 for Intrepid.