After nearly 20 years of development on the Python 2 series, the last major version 2.7 will be released in April 2020, and then all development will cease for Python 2. Users are urged to migrate to Python 3 to benefit from its many improvements, as well as to avoid potential security vulnerabilities in Python 2.x after April 2020. This move will free limited resources for the CPthyon core developer community for other important work.
The final Python 2.7 maintenance release was originally planned for 2015. However, it was delayed 5 years to give people adequate time to migrate and to work closely with vendors and redistributors to ensure that supported Python 3 migration options were available. Part of the reason for this delay was because the stricter text model in Python 3 was forcing the resolution of non-trivial Unicode handling issues in the reference interpreter and standard library, and in migrated libraries and applications
Python 3 is a noticeable improvement to Python. There is ground-up support for Unicode and internationalization. It better expresses common idioms and patterns, which in code makes it easier to read and reason about. Improvements in concurrency, fault handling, testing, and debugging provide developers with the opportunity to create more robust and secure applications.
Going forward, Python 3 will be the only major version of CPython that is actively maintained for bugs and security issues.
More information:
- Press release: https://www.python.org/psf/press-release/pr20191220/
- Simple FAQ: https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/
- Comprehensive FAQ: http://python-notes.curiousefficiency.org/en/latest/python3/questions_and_answers.html
- Developer porting guide: https://portingguide.readthedocs.io
Clarification Update January 8, 2020
Effective January 1, 2020, no new bug reports, fixes, or changes will be made to Python 2.After Python 2.7.17 (October 19, 2019) was released, some additional changes accumulated before the end of 2019 when the core development team froze the 2.7 branch. As a final service to the community, python-dev will bundle those fixes -- and only those fixes -- into a final 2.7.18 release. The release date for 2.7.18 will be in April 2020 because that allows time for the release managers to complete a release candidate and final release.