[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Python binding for OpenSRF and Evergreen

[Jason Stephenson]

Hi, all.

I would like to point out a few facts that prompted me to raise the
question of maintaining or dropping Python at the recent development
meeting.

1. The OpenSRF and Evergreen Python libraries are compatible with Python
2.7.

2. Python 2.7 is end of life as of January 1, 2020:
https://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2018-March/152348.html

3. srfsh.py works on Ubuntu 18.04, but not on Ubutnu 16.04. I believe
this is because of a bug in a Python XMPP library on Ubuntu 16.04.  (I
have not tested it on Debian releases lately.)

4. Syrup is essentially abandonware.  The last commit was made in 2014.

5. Syrup cannot be installed on any currently supported release of
Debian or Ubuntu without major changes.  I tried and gave up after
spending over half a day on it.

My recommendation is that someone take over Python support in OpenSRF
and Evergreen and update it for Python 3.

I'm less concerned about what happens to Syrup, but interested parties
should get together and update the code for Syrup if they wish to see it
be usable again.

I will say that I have considered taking up one or both of those
projects, but time does not currently permit me to do so.  I suspect
that this is likely to be the answer for everyone so possibly we could
have a team work on it.

Cheers,
Jason