Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Road to 2.7 (Or: The Future of IronPython)

There have been a few people asking what they can contribute to IronPython. Right now, we need to identify what's not working in 2.7B1 that needs to be in 2.7 final. The best thing to do would be to identify any issues that are causing you pain and bring them up on the list. Then we can decide what meets the bar for a 2.7 release (with issues that have patches getting priority, of course!). Dino, are there any issues that you know are in 2.7B1 that must be fixed for 2.7 final?

Dino has provided some instructions on contributing to IronPython. We need people to run through that and if there's anything it doesn't cover (I do intend to add subversion instructions directly at some point), and run the test suite as well. Also, doing all of that on Mono, to see what work needs to be done there.

Besides knowing what needs to be done, we need a rough timeline. I would like to see a release before the end of the year, or at least a solid release candidate with a possible release early next year. The idea behind an aggressive schedule is to focus on getting the features we have solid and not worry about adding new features or libraries (with the possible exception of zlib). That said, this all just my desires, and I really want to get an idea of what every one else is thinking. Please send feedback to the IronPython list on what you want to see.