Python 3.7.2 and 3.6.8 are now available(pythoninsider.blogspot.com) |
Python 3.7.2 and 3.6.8 are now available(pythoninsider.blogspot.com) |
This is generally done for those who want "stable" releases with minimal bug fixes. The 3.7 branch has newer features and therefore, potentially more bugs.
If you want the latest stable version, get 3.7.0. If you want the latest version, get 3.7.2.
3.7.2 is a maintenance release of the 3.7 series...I am not aware of anyone who considers 3.7.0 the version you should stay with.
That still doesn't explain why it makes sense for python devs to be split among what, 4 different 3.x branches in the last year? I can understand keeping one stable LTS branch and one "up to date" branch, but the current system seems like a waste of resources and extra complexity, though I assume there's a good reason I'm not familiar with. For example, 3.4 .9 was released after 3.7.0. [1]
Maybe I'm just missing something about the numbering scheme?
I know some who would argue that Debian is generally the more stable server and Ubuntu more bleeding edge.
Everybody interested in the new features from 3.7 would use the latest version here.
As python can introduce minor "breaking" changes this is quite a good way of ensuring compatibility.
>> Python 3.6.8 is planned to be the last bugfix release of Python 3.6. Per our support policy, we plan to provide security fixes for Python 3.6 as needed through 2021, five years following its initial release.
For new projects I tend to favor Python 3.7 over 3.6. But sometimes I have to fall back to 3.6 because some packages have not been updated yet and I don't want to install them from Git(Hub) (e.g. GeoPandas through pyproj).
There are differences between 3.x releases, and things like security issues or bugs need to be fixed. Saying "well duh just upgrade" isn't acceptable.
Very rare everyone can jump versions especially when there are syntax changes. In my case it’s around imports.
Introducing new features bears an elevated risk of breaking thingss. Hence stable systems (and in extension, stable distributions like Debian) tend to use stable, bug and security fix only branches. This used to be more common.
As of Python 3.6, for the CPython implementation of Python, dictionaries remember the order of items inserted. This is considered an implementation detail in Python 3.6; you need to use OrderedDict if you want insertion ordering that's guaranteed across other implementations of Python.
As of Python 3.7, this is no longer an implementation detail and instead becomes a language feature.
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39980323/are-dictionarie...
I think you can be more clear here: all dicts are ordered by insertion order (not by key).
If you did that then lots of distro packagers would just stay on the LTS until the next one comes along, and so you'd increase the number of users that are on older versions. With the selected approach, there is more work involved to backport a fix to the 4-5 supported versions, but this gives the benefit that OS distros can bump their Python versions more frequently, and so end users get updated Python3 features more often.
For example, they might only upgrade major Python versions (3.x) once they migrate from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS or even directly four years to 20.04 LTS. Whichever Python version is available by default there becomes the next Python LTS for them.
For now, all versions since 3.4 receive occasional security and bug fixes to make all of them are "stable". New features are only adopted with a major version (3.x) bump.
I have not heard of the Python community complaining about this being too much work - after all improvement work is only done in the latest version, old versions just get backported bug fixes.
https://devguide.python.org/devcycle/#security-branches
Arbitrary, but not senseless or anything.
If you drill into the security releases, they are pretty small patches backported from later releases, not a huge burden.
Now, with ordered dictionaries, that order is maintained for free.
Kwarg order in functions is also maintained as far as I know.
This is a handy way of making classification rules for a many stepped process, where certain rules have priority over others. The alternative would be a lengthy set of ifs and elifs which is both ugly and not fun to edit on the fly.
I do find it surprising that Linux distributions don’t always choose upstream LTS versions for their releases, it just feels like a big waste of effort to backport fixes across many versions.
Actually, Debian Stretch was released in April 2015, and their general freeze was set at November 2016.
Debian spends about 4 years producing a stable release, which excels at stability at the expense of using software releases that are far from the bleeding edge.
So now that its upgraded to language feature, you can actually expect backwards compatibility in future updates.
PyPy has had ordered dicts for longer than CPython, and Jython and IronPython don't look like they're ever going to support Python 3, so I'm not sure who this declaration is even even hypothetically relevant to.