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Subject: Re: What's our minimum supported Python version?
From: Florents Tselai <florents.tselai@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <16098.1745079444@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 20:05:22 +0300
Cc: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
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Message-Id: <13A8FADC-B04D-4BA1-8EC2-18BCBEFF5EF9@gmail.com>
References: <16098.1745079444@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Archived-At: <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/13A8FADC-B04D-4BA1-8EC2-18BCBEFF5EF9%40gmail.com>
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> On 19 Apr 2025, at 7:17=E2=80=AFPM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> =
wrote:
>=20
> Our fine manual claims the answer to $SUBJECT is 3.2.
>=20
> However, there is room to doubt that our code still actually
> works with 3.2, because the oldest version I can find being
> tested by the buildfarm is topminnow's 3.4.2.  The next oldest
> is shelduck's 3.4.10, and everything else has 3.5.2 or newer.
> topminnow hasn't reported in a couple months, so it may
> actually be dead.
>=20
> The reason I bring this up is that I found out the hard way
> that src/test/modules/oauth_validator fails on RHEL8, because
> its oauth_server.py script is not compatible with the 3.6.8
> version of Python supplied by this distro.  (There are 22
> buildfarm animals running 3.6.8, presumably mostly also Red
> Hat-derived platforms, so I'm not going to apologize for
> my workstation being a little long in the tooth.)
>=20
> I think we need to do some combination of moving our
> minimum-supported-version goalposts forward, making sure that
> whatever we claim is the minimum Python version is actually
> being tested in the buildfarm, and fixing oauth_server.py
> so that it works on that version.
>=20
> I am not familiar enough with the Python landscape to
> have an informed opinion about what the minimum supported
> version should be.  But I'll present this data scraped
> from the buildfarm about how many animals are running what
> (counting animals that have reported since 2025-01-01):
>=20
>  Count Version
>=20
>      1 3.4.2
>      1 3.4.10
>      2 3.5.2
>      3 3.5.3
>      2 3.6.5
>     22 3.6.8
>      3 3.6.9
>      5 3.6.15
>      1 3.7.1
>      2 3.7.3
>      1 3.7.10
>      2 3.7.16
>      1 3.8.8
>      4 3.8.10
>     15 3.9.2
>      6 3.9.16
>      6 3.9.18
>      1 3.9.19
>      2 3.9.20
>     13 3.9.21
>      6 3.10.x
>     18 3.11.x
>     21 3.12.x
>     22 3.13.x
>=20
>    160 total
>=20
> Thoughts?
>=20
> 			regards, tom lane
>=20

=46rom an Python ecosystem perspective,
 3.9 is the usual minimum that people use in CI matrices nowdays.
So if it was up to me, that=E2=80=99s what I=E2=80=99d choose.=20

Mabe 3.7 if I was too liberal, but <3.6 and older it=E2=80=99s probably =
too old to bother.
Then again, I=E2=80=99m not a buildfarm power user, so my 2 cents are =
worth a bit less.