Python Release Support Policy

[mpounsett]

When I took over maintenance of the project from Christian Kauhaus, the original author, I intended to continue to support old Python versions as long as possible. This was mainly because I know that there are a lot of old unmaintained systems out there, and I didn't want to disrupt people's running systems if I didn't have to.

Unfortunately, maintaining support for old Python releases is becoming increasingly difficult and, as build tools have continued to drop support for old versions, it has become effectively impossible for the oldest of them. I've also found that as new language features are added to Python, there are places where the project would benefit from adoption, but I'm locked out of using them because of backward compatibility.

So I find myself in the position if needing to draw a line somewhere, and the simplest thing to do is just to support Python versions from their "First release" date until they reach "End of life." New development will be able to proceed without running into difficulty with build tool support, and the project will be able to adopt new language features as the old versions that don't support them reach end-of-life.

These are the details of the new policy:

1. New releases of Python will be added to support with the next major or minor release of Nagiosplugin.
2. Python versions entering end-of-life will be removed from support at the next major or minor release of Nagiosplugin.
3. Patch releases of Nagiosplugin will neither add nor remove Python version support.

The transition to the new policy will take place over the next couple of minor releases:

• In the upcoming 1.4.0 release, I'm dropping support for Python 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6.
• When 1.5.0 is released (whenever that is), it will drop support for all end-of-life Python versions at that time. At the moment, that includes Python 2.7, 3.7, and 3.8.

The official list of supported Python versions is maintained by the Python devs here.