Re: [RFC] Bump minimum Python version to 3.4

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Paul Koning <paulkoning@comcast.net>
> Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2023 14:20:29 -0400
> Cc: Tom Tromey <tromey@adacore.com>,
>  gdb-patches@sourceware.org,
>  legouguec@adacore.com
> 
> > On Jun 2, 2023, at 2:14 PM, Eli Zaretskii via Gdb-patches <gdb-patches@sourceware.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> Cc: legouguec@adacore.com,
> >> 	Tom Tromey <tromey@adacore.com>
> >> Date: Fri,  2 Jun 2023 10:33:03 -0600
> >> From: Tom Tromey via Gdb-patches <gdb-patches@sourceware.org>
> >> 
> >> While looking into the f-string issue, I noticed that the README
> >> documents 3.2 as the minimum Python version, while gdb.texinfo says
> >> 3.0.2.  Asking on irc, I found out that SuSE's "LTS" ships 3.4, and
> >> RHEL 7 ships 3.6.  Based on this I think it's reasonable to bump the
> >> minimum required version to 3.4.
> >> ---
> >> gdb/NEWS                     |  2 ++
> >> gdb/README                   |  2 +-
> >> gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo          |  2 +-
> >> gdb/python/py-gdb-readline.c |  4 ----
> >> gdb/python/python-internal.h | 11 -----------
> >> 5 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)
> > 
> > If the increase in the minimum supported versions is agreed upon, the
> > documentation parts of this are OK.
> 
> Given that python.org tells us the oldest supported version is 3.6, and that one goes off support at the end of this month, it might make sense to raise the minimum to 3.6 or 3.7.

To that, I'd object: it means, effectively, to drop support for
Windows XP, where the last Python version is 3.4.4.

We, as part of the GNU project, have no obligation to follow the
recommendations of python.org.  We should make our own decisions,
based on our goals.