[osgeo4w-dev] Upgrading o4w Python

[Alex Mandel]

On 12/16/2010 09:39 AM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> On 10-12-16 12:31 PM, Matt Wilkie wrote:
>> Hello All,
>>
>> What specifically are the impediments to changing Osgeo4W python to
>> 2.7? (or
>> any other number for that matter) I don't mean as an end user already
>> using
>> o4w, but from the perspective of the project itself; what do we have
>> to do to
>> enable us to ship python 2.7?
> 
> Matt,
> 
> I think the main barrier is the need to rebuild all the python bindings
> for the various packages.  That is a fairly substantial effort.  What
> advantages does Python 2.7 give us?  Potentially we could do that as
> part of a major refresh when also moving to GDAL 1.8 as our primary GDAL?
> 
> Best regards,

One possible item is the somewhat forward compatibility of Python 2.6+
with Python 3. Basically for some of the syntax changes like 'print',
the python 3 syntax works now to make moving code to python 3 later easier.

I imagine the other issue is that for some additional python libraries
there are no 2.5 candidates anymore (Can't think of any specific package
right now)

2.7 sounds like the last of the 2.x series and there are plans for a
long lifetime. http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.7.html
A bunch of fixes to number conversion and handling sound important for
GIS related stuff.

Thanks,
Alex