[0xADEADBEE]

This isn't strictly true. The final cPython release (2.7.18) is slated for April next year [0], and PyPy has no such plans to drop support [1].

I don't honestly think Python 2 is going anywhere for a while yet (judging from some of the commercial codebases I've seen at least). I sometimes wonder if this mess would have dragged on quite so long if there'd been better features in Python 3.

[0] - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/#maintenance-releas...

[1] - https://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/faq.html#how-long-will-pypy-s...

[rlpb]

> The final cPython release (2.7.18) is slated for April next year [0]...

Fair enough, but there is still no commitment from upstream for most of the supported release of the next Debian release, so that is moot.

> ...PyPy has no such plans to drop support

This isn't relevant to the CPython package dependencies which are the issue at matter for Debian on this matter. They haven't explicitly said CPython because it's implicit the way that Debian's Python packaging is structured.

[bsder]

> I sometimes wonder if this mess would have dragged on quite so long if there'd been better features in Python 3.

There are still quite a few people running VB6 programs.

Nothing helps this; there will always be laggards.

If it weren't for deadlines, progress would never get made.