prefer Python for new scripts?

[Tom Yu]

Zhanna Tsitkova <tsitkova at MIT.EDU> writes:

> You have my vote, of course. 
> Also, back in February, when I initially proposed Python for our testing framework, we discussed what version of Python should be used - 2.3, 2.5 2.6 or 3.0 - and the question is still open. I prefer 2.6+ and would not go below 2.5. 
> Any strong preferences with regard to version choice?

I think our minimum Python version requirement should be based on
whatever versions ship with operating systems we care about.  For
example, Mac OS 10.5 ships with 2.5.1; Debian-stable ships 2.5.2; RHEL
4 ships 2.3, I think, which has been problematic in the past
(Linux-Athena 9.4 was based on RHEL 4, but that is quite ancient at
this point.); RHEL 5 ships 2.4.x: not sure how much people still care
about that.  I'm not sure what ships on modern releases of Solaris,
but the Solaris 10 (3/05?) box I'm using has Python 2.3.3.

Scripts that are required in the build process but not in the test
suite should require lower versions of Python, to be friendlier to
non-developer users and sysadmins who are building from source.  (Note
that we currently already require Perl for the build process.)

Given that much of my current work environment is on Mac OS 10.5, I
would be biased toward using Python 2.5 as a minimum, but may update
my opinion based on additional information about what Python versions
various operating systems ship.