Remove pre-Python 3.8 C code #124
Conversation
|
See #113 for my personal stance on this issue. @nitzmahone If wants to merge this anyway, go ahead. |
|
@arigo thanks for that input. I also maintain two libraries for which I kept 2.7 support until not too long ago, but finally decided to drop it, with the rationale being that 2.7 users still can use the old versions without lacking much functionality anyway. Kind-of-supporting 2.7 (or anything other than what I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but have a look at https://pypistats.org/packages/cffi. Seeing those numbers was also something that prompted me to drop support for <1% of users, who again can still download earlier versions of my library. Removing hundreds of lines of C code and macros I think pays the price. My opinion only of course, if you decide you want to keep the code that's fine, you know your audience and needs better, I won't be pushing back. |
|
Yeah, especially with the very deep inspection and review of all the code that's going to be necessary for proper support of free-threaded Python builds, I'm all for minimizing compatibility code in the active development branches for Python versions that aren't supported/tested. My experience has repeatedly taught me: if it's not getting tested, it's probably broken... The old branches of course aren't going anywhere, so if someone really needs to make something work on a long-dead Python version, they can always install an older release or backport fixes to a private fork. We've had several firedrills in recent memory caused by "dead but still called" code breaking suddenly, so I'm quite happy to be more aggressive about cleaning that stuff up for 1.18 and beyond. Thanks! |
|
Thanks @nitzmahone, that sounds pretty good to me :) I have been building some further changes on top of these in the hopes that they'd be merged. Based on your message I'll continue under that assumption. Would you be happy for a similar effort in the python codebase? |
|
Gentle ping here to see if the intention of doing this clean-up is still there, thanks! I've just also rebased on top of the latest |
Most of this is removing code for PY_VERSION_MINOR < 3, removing the guards for PY_VERSION_MAJOR >= 3, and removing all unnecessary macros that would now have a single definition (e.g., PyText_Check -> PyUnicode_Check) in favour of using the direct Python C API for clarity. Only in minor circumstances some small logic needed to be changed. Signed-off-by: Rodrigo Tobar <[email protected]>
Similarly to the previous commit, the bulk of the work is removing code for PY_VERSION_HEX < 0x03080000, removing #if guards around PY_VERSION_HEX >= 0x03080000, and removing unnecessary macro definitions. Signed-off-by: Rodrigo Tobar <[email protected]>
|
Another gentle ping after a few months of inactivity |
rtobar
force-pushed
the
remove-pre38-c-code
branch
from
8aa897d to
db6983c
Compare
This is a bit of a big one, but it's mostly removal of dead code anyway, so hopefully it's not too controversial, and well received.
While doing some further code inspection today to re-tackle #86 I realised that there's still a fair bit of code in the C extension, and in the C extension generator, for Python < 3.8. Since 3.8 is the minimum supported version, it makes sense to remove that now-dead code in favour of a less complex codebase.
In order to make this a bit more digestible I split this work in two commits: one focuses on removing support for Python <3, and another for <3.8. Many of these changes are big
#ifblocks that could easily be removed. In a few places there were macros that were defined differently depending on the Python version, that would have now been left with a single definition. In these cases I removed the macro altogether in favour of using the direct Python C API or idiom as required (e.g., all thePyText_*macros are nowPyUnicode_*calls, etc).Both commits are (I think) correctly self-contained, at least locally they individually both compile, install and test correctly. So in case something breaks it should be easy to bisect back.