Consider dropping support for unsupported Pythons? #157
Description
Things are getting harder to support both modern versions of Python alongside old ones.
This issue will be a place where I can document the relevant information, and any decisions going forward.
- Python 2 is no longer available in the Ubuntu Docker image
pipandtoxremoved support for Python < 3.8
So as a result I don't update our benchmarking numbers for Python < 3.8 anymore.
cimg/pythondoesn't support Python 3.4 (but we have a workaround)- Python 3.12 dropped
setuptools setuptoolsitself dropped test runner features
It might be time to give in and drop support for older versions.
Going forward, we might decide that we'll only support to versions of Python that are still supported by upstream.
Benefits
- We could eliminate some code by dropping support for Python < 3.9
- We'd be able to run our benchmarking for all supported versions
- We'd be able to move to a more modern Python packaging system (Test and build using PEP 517-compliant methods #147)
Detriments
- Some users wouldn't be able to use the latest versions of
ciso8601:
Last month's (2024-10) download stats:
| category | percent | downloads |
|---|---|---|
| 3.14 | 0.00% | 13 |
| 3.13 | 0.06% | 2,708 |
| 3.12 | 3.69% | 168,627 |
| 3.11 | 20.38% | 930,445 |
| 3.10 | 40.81% | 1,862,952 |
| 3.9 | 10.09% | 460,599 |
| 3.8 | 8.93% | 407,673 |
| 3.7 | 1.57% | 71,752 |
| 3.6 | 4.24% | 193,677 |
| 3.5 | 0.00% | 9 |
| 3.4 | 0.00% | 2 |
| 2.7 | 0.14% | 6,582 |
| null | 10.07% | 459,887 |
| Total | 4,564,926 |
So at least 14.88% of downloads are from unsupported versions (though 8.93% is from the very recently unsupported 3.8 so we might see that drop quickly in the coming months).
This would of course be a breaking change, so we'd have a major version bump for it.