What is expected from Python?

[encukou]

Hi,
Python is listed as a bad example, citing that "Python maintains the EoL status on the website for Python developers".
What is bad about this?
The devguide site is used because the main documentation is versioned, so the info can't go there (for reasons detailed in your recommendations -- support policy might change over time, but the link should not).

[captn3m0]

I couldn't fit it into the recommendations, but here's some suggestions:

1. The page should be hosted off the dev-site. The dev-site landing page says:

This guide is a comprehensive resource for contributing to Python – for both new and experienced contributors. It is maintained by the same community that maintains Python. We welcome your contributions to Python!

And end-user shouldn't have to worry about this at all. The dev-site is also focused on "branches", which is not necessarily something an end-user is used to. (everything else uses releases).

Except for that one small table, everything else on the entire devguide.python.org is targeted to python developers. Perhaps it could be hosted on python.org/about/supported-versions instead?

2. The page should be stand-alone at the very least. Without a internal-anchor link, the same page provides information about setting up a local python development environment. Scroll through the whole page, and see how much of it is relevant to a Python user. These kind of changes are not merely helpful to end-user, but also to search engines. Maybe a https://devguide.python.org/supported-versions/ page?

Having this easily accessible in the main Python site will be a win. See for eg, this question which points out how this information was hard to get from search engines.

On a related note, the "docs side is versioned" makes for bad publication across multiple python projects:

• Ansible
• Django versions its release policy but accounts for it by providing a table on the main site.

[hugovk]

Another thing is the active and EOL branches are split across two pages:

https://devguide.python.org/#status-of-python-branches
https://devguide.python.org/devcycle/#end-of-life-branches

They should be on one page.

Also the latter table has a useful link to the former. But you need to scroll down the former's page to find and click "Development Cycle" and then scroll down again.

Also, as an end user, what's all this talk of branches? I want a Python release like 3.9 or 3.10.

[captn3m0]

As another empirical metric, Python shows up at the top of our search metrics:

• Users search a lot for python, eol, 3.x, supported versions and the devguide page doesn't show up in the search results for such queries. The Release schedule PEPs do show up, but they are hard to parse for a end-user, and the critical information (whether or not it is supported) is buried away in prose.

• The python queries are consistently among the top-performing ones (only iPhone/Windows come close - both of which are much harder to find).

You can see some numbers on our Wiki.

[ezio-melotti]

This pull request replaces the two tables mentioned above with two easily-parsable csvs:

• Replace the "Status of the Python branches" table with a csv. python/devguide#884

We are also reorganizing the structure of the devguide, so we could move these two tables in a page on their own in a future PR.

[CAM-Gerlach]

Also, we're giving Release PEPs their own Topic and will display them, sorted by status, in a dedicated top-level index page:

• Add Topic for release schedule PEPs python/peps#2669

You can see a preview here.

[ezio-melotti]

I also created an issue about adding a page to python.org as suggested by @captn3m0 above:

• Add a page about the status of the Python releases python/pythondotorg#2066

This page will mainly benefit the end users that are looking for this information through search engines -- scripts and bots can still parse the Devguide's csvs.