Dear all,
The OME project has evaluated the level of Python 2.4 and 2.5 usage across the OMERO 4.4 platform. Python 2.4 usage is currently restricted to OMERO.web and OMERO.diagnostics running on RHEL5/CentOS5 systems. Python 2.5 usage is limited to a very small number of Windows systems. The vast majority of installations are currently using Python 2.6 or 2.7, split roughly equally (all platforms combined) with 2.7 usage displacing 2.6 over time from about 25% in July 2012 to around 50% today.
In the absence of any major blocker, we plan to remove support for Python 2.4 and 2.5 in the OMERO 5.0 release. At this point users and developers will require Python 2.6 or 2.7 for these and future releases. Python 2.4 and 2.5 will continue to be supported for future 4.4 releases.
Requiring 2.6 as the minimum Python version will bring performance improvements and allow use of new language features which will improve the quality and robustness of our code (http://docs.python.org/2/whatsnew/2.6.html). The better library support will also permit faster implementation of user requests and new features, for example for analysis scripts, and will also provide some Python 3 features to allow development of support for Python 3.
We would be interested in hearing feedback if you are in a situation where it is not possible to upgrade to a more recent version of Python, and this change will cause problems. In particular, it would be useful to have the details of the system you are using.
Users of RHEL5/CentOS5 should consider upgrading to RHEL6/CentOS6 when the time comes to upgrade to OMERO 5.x. Windows users can install newer 2.6/2.7 Python packages from http://www.python.org/download/.
Regards,
Roger Leigh
