Python3 cffi bindings

[Tomi Ollila]

On Sat, Nov 16 2019, David Bremner wrote:

> Gaute Hope <eg at gaute.vetsj.com> writes:
>
>>
>> By the way, it does not seem that the API is very far from the
>> previous python API. If it is close enough, perhaps it is possible to
>> get away with a bug version bump in the bindings rather than creating
>> a new package. I understand the need for a new package, but it would
>> be nice if we could avoid the future confusion of two python binding
>> packages (if at all possible).
>>
>
> I'm not in a good position to judge how similar the APIs are.  It does
> seem like there are at least some breaking changes, and we usually try
> to make things smooth for people upgrading by deprecating interfaces
> before removing them completely. On the other hand our previous concern
> for supporting python pre 3.6 (I think. Maybe 3.5?) seems less and less
> worrying (except maybe for people using old CentOS like things).


Currently such a recent Linux distribution as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is not new
enough to be used as is when compiling latest notmuch from git (or 0.29),
as GMIME 3.0 is required (Ubuntu 16.04 ships GMIME 2.6 and Python 3.5).

GMIME 2.6 was pretty easy to compile, GMIME 3 is a bit harder...

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS ships python 3.5 -- and compiling later Pythons is easier
than GMIME 3 (done both, GMIME 3 on CentOS 6, Python 3.7 on CentOS 7).

So, IMO not supporting python pre 3.6 is fine, as we already reguire gmime 3 
and probably soon xapian 1.4 -- distros that ship gmime3 most probably 
already ship python 3.6...


Tomi


>
> d