A number of Python projects are promising to transition to Python 3 by the end of the year.
Currently, a majority of Python packages and projects support Python 3.x and Python 2.7. The Python programming language development team has announced support for Python 2.7 will end by the end of the year. Projects have had five years to stop supporting Python 2.7, and the projects pledging to support Python 3 say it will simplify code and open up new features in the version version and standard library.
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“We are keen to use Python 3 to its full potential, and we currently accept the cost of writing cross-compatible code to allow a smooth transition, but we don’t intend to maintain this compatibility indefinitely. Although the transition has not been as quick as we hoped, we do see it taking place, with more and more people using, teaching and recommending Python 3,” the Python 3 pledge stated. “In addition, significantly before 2020, many of our projects will step down Python 2.7 support to only fixing bugs, and require Python 3 for all new feature releases. Some projects have already made this transition. This too parallels support for the language itself, as Python 2.7 releases only include bug fixes and security improvements.”
The participating Python 3 projects include TensorFlow, Apache Spark, Apache MXNet, Tornado, pandas, scikit-learn, and SciPy.
In addition, the Python team recently announced Python 3.8.0b3 is available for testing. It is the third of four planned beta release previews. The last beta will be released after all release blocker and deferred blocker issues are resolved. Python 3.8 is expected to feature assignment expressions, positional-only arguments, runtime audit hooks, Python Initialization Configuration, and pickle protocol 5.
