[Pythoncard-users] release 0.8 and beyond minimum requirement issues

[Kevin A. <al...@se...>]

Rowland and I are both chomping at the bit to start the cleanup and 
major changes for release 0.8. I've requested that SourceForge copy the 
existing PythonCardPrototype tree to a new tree called PythonCard. At 
the earliest, 0.8 won't be ready to go until May.

The main issue that I need feedback on now is the decision to drop 
support for wxPython 2.4.x. In order to support new style classes and 
cleanup the code we really need to move away from wxPython 2.4.x. Thus, 
I don't see keeping 2.4.x compatibility as a realistic option. But this 
move isn't without some pain, so here's what it means.

We are shooting for PythonCard 1.x working with wxPython 2.6, the next 
stable API release of wxWidgets/wxPython. The wxPython 2.5.x API won't 
stabilize completely until 2.6 is released, which is this summer at the 
earliest, and could be toward the end of the year. If and when the 
2.5.x API changes, each version of PythonCard will have to track those 
changes and the minimum version requirement may change until we get to 
wxPython 2.6.x. For example, PythonCard release 0.8 may require 
wxPython 2.5.1.5 as a minimum and release 0.8.1 or 0.9 might require 
wxPython 2.5.2.1, etc.

If you've built a standalone or want to stick with an older version of 
PythonCard for a while you won't be impacted until you want to support 
the latest version.

I won't be using or testing wxPython 2.4.x at all once we start the 
changes, so if you have an objection or issue with this decision that 
you want to raise, the time to do so is now.

A less important decision is whether to require Python 2.3.x or higher. 
Are most Linux releases still using Python 2.2.x? If so, will it be a 
pain to require Python 2.3.x for PythonCard? So far, I can think of few 
reasons why we have to have 2.3, but I no longer run Python 2.2.x 
myself on any of my machines, so unless someone else is going to step 
up and do extensive testing for Python 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.3, etc. I'm 
inclined to stop supporting it.

ka