Removing support for Python 3.6 (even 3.7?) this cycle (for upcoming hg-6.9)

[Gregory Szorc]

Historically Python version support was tied to OS’s within support windows. And the long tail there is usually RHEL. Those timelines are listed at https://access.redhat.com/product-life-cycles?product=Red%20Hat%20Enterprise%20Linux,OpenShift%20Container%20Platform%204.

RHEL 7 is still within extended support and 8 is within maintenance support. 

RHEL’s support window is an eternity. I think it imposes an excessive burden on Mercurial developers to support ancient Pythons for that long.

So my suggestion would be for Mercurial to adopt Python’s EOL schedule. That would mean dropping 3.6 + 3.7 now and 3.8 after it hits EOL later this year.

I would like to think the existence of Mercurial packages or an installer script installing its own (modern) Python would alleviate any concerns from end-users here. It’s not like these ancient distros are upgrading to a modern Mercurial in their first party packages.

> On Jul 25, 2024, at 05:40, Raphaël Gomès <raphael.gomes at octobus.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> The question of removing support for Python 3.6 (and to a lesser extent 3.7) is being raised more and more, while the burden of supporting it is increasing.
> 
> Does anyone still care about Python 3.6 or even Python 3.7? Both versions have been EOL for a while (2021-12-23 and 2023-06-27 respectively), and distros/users seem to largely have jumped to much more recent versions. For instance, Centos 7 and 8 are EOL and the latter already had 3.9, Rocky Linux 8 has 3.6, 3.8, 3.9, 3.11 and 3.12.
> 
> IMO the limited maintenance burden of general usage that the contributors can afford has been reached for 3.6 and probably 3.7.
> 
> I - along with other frequent contributors - would be *very happy* to get rid of 3.6 and 3.7 in one fell swoop, considering that 3.8 will be EOL in November of this year, which is already close.
> 
> If nobody says anything, I suggest that support for 3.6 and 3.7 be removed during this cycle, which is for the upcoming Mercurial 6.9.
> 
> Please tell us what you think,
> Raphaël
> 
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