Re: FYI: Python 3 migration of distributuion

Charles Cazabon <[email protected]> writes:

> Osamu Aoki <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> Currently, getmail is a candidate for removal from the upcoming Debian
>> release if it is not updated to support python 3 by someone (not
>> necessary by upstream).
>
> Thanks for the update, Osamu.  I have actually been playing with a prototype
> refactoring of getmail to not just support but require a recent Python 3.x
> version.  Such a project would give me the opportunity to remove a lot of
> historical cruft and backwards-compatibility code that getmail has accumulated
> over 20+ years.
>
> Unfortunately, it's difficult to find the hours to devote to this task.  I
> don't know when, or even if, I could have a beta release ready.

Thanks, Charles, for getmail, which I've been using happily for over a
decade! What you've described does indeed sound like a big task, and I
appreciate all the work you've put into this project over the years.

>> If you convert python 2 code for 2.7 style, then we can support both
>> python 2 and 3.
>
> I'm not very interested in doing this, as it means not using a lot of 3.x
> features, or not using them in the most Pythonic way.  My thought was that
> this project would target at least Python 3.7; anyone who didn't want to run
> 3.7 could still run "legacy" getmail under Python 2.7.

I believe there are several volunteers (both on the Debian bug report
and here) who have indicated that they would be willing to help port
getmail to Python 3. Making the getmail code available on a public git
repo would likely help with this process. None of this need prevent
longer-term plans to refactor getmail. But making short-term changes
would help to ensure that a) getmail remains in the major distributions,
b) retains its user-base, and c) stays secure and up-to-date. 

Whatever direction the project takes, I don't think it is a viable
option to advise people to use a v2 version of getmail going forward.
Python 2 will stop getting security updates in April 2020, leaving users
of a v2 getmail vulnerable to new exploits found in Python's network and
security stack.

Best,

Matt