Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 181 posts

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#91

Post by OJFord »

saghm wrote: post #30
Hamuko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being three major versions behind CPython is definitely not a great sign for the long-term viability of it.

I'm not sure "major versions" is the most correct term here, but I think your point is spot on

They are de facto semantic major versions - think of recent-ish additions like f-strings and match-case (3.7 and 3.11, I think), you'd get a syntax error in an older parser. PyPy targeting 3.9 for example would would support f-strings but not match-case.

Or at runtime, you can import things from the standard library which require a minimum 3.x. - .x releases frequently if not always add things, or even change an existing API.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#92

Post by masklinn »

m000 wrote: post #73
cfbolztereick wrote: post #43

PyPy isn't unmaintained. We are certainly fixing bugs and are occasionally improving the jit. However, the remaining core devs (me among them) don't have the capacity to keep up with cpython. So for supporting new cpython versions we'll need new people to step up. For 3.12 this has started, we have a new contributor who is pushing this along.

The text merged to the documentation is more concise than the PR title: > not actively developed anymore

Which is just as wrong.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#93

Post by hyperpape »

masklinn wrote: post #92
m000 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The text merged to the documentation is more concise than the PR title: > not actively developed anymore

Which is just as wrong.

I think the most significant boundary is given by the question: "is there a plan to support new minor versions of Python?" It sounds like there is not.

There may be non-zero maintenance work happening, but a project that only maintains support for old versions and will never adopt new ones is functionally one that the ecosystem will eventually forget about. Maybe you call that "under active development" but my response is "ok, then I don't care whether it's under active development, I (and 99.9% of other people) should care about whether it's going to support new minor versions."

On the other hand, if you don't support new minor versions day one, but you eventually support them, that's quite different.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#94

Post by RobotToaster »

trueismywork wrote: post #90
mattip wrote: post #18

PyPy core dev here. If anyone is interested in helping out, either financially or with coding, we can be reached various ways. See https://pypy.org/contact.html

Also big notice that it is unmaintained

And that the corporations using their work should donate if they actually want it maintained.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#95

Post by masklinn »

tempay wrote: post #40
swiftcoder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 months since the last major release definitely feels like a short time in which to declare time-of-death on an open source project

It’s been a lot longer than that. There was a reasonable sized effort to provide binaries via conda-forge but the users never came. That said, the PyPy devs were always a pleasure to work with.

> It’s been a lot longer than that.

pypy 7.3.20, officially supporting python 3.11, was released in july 2025: https://pypy.org/posts/2025/07/pypy-v7320-release.html

We're in March 2026. That's 9 months, which is exactly what GP stated.

> There was a reasonable sized effort to provide binaries via conda-forge but the users never came.

How is that in any way relevant to the maintenance status of pypy?

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#96

Post by johndough »

localuser13 wrote: post #87
johndough wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. For me, f-strings were the last great quality-of-life improvement that I wouldn't want to live without, and those landed in Python 3.6. Everything after that has not really made much of a difference to me.

If you want your code to run, you need a python interpreter that supports the newest of your dependencies. You may not use features that came after 3.6 (though you obviously do), but even if just one dependency or sub-depdendency used a python 3.10 specific feature you now need interpreter at least this new.

That is true, and it is also a huge pet peeve of mine. If more library maintainers showed some restraint it using the newest and hottest features, we'd have much less update churn. But on the other hand, this is what keeps half of us employed, so maybe we should keep at it after all.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#97

Post by RobotToaster »

cjfd wrote: post #47
the_jeremy wrote: post #4

If anyone else is also barely aware and confused by the similar names, PyPI is the Python Package Index, which is up and maintained. PyPy is "A fast, compliant alternative implementation of Python." which doesn't have enough devs to release a version for 3.12[0]. [0]: https://github.com/orgs/pypy/discussions/5145

The short summary of it being that these people are beyond terrible at giving names to things.

Programmers and engineers should never be allowed to name things.

I say that as a programmer and engineer.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#99

Post by masklinn »

hobofan wrote: post #51
swiftcoder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 months since the last major release definitely feels like a short time in which to declare time-of-death on an open source project

It is also lagging behind in terms of Python releases. They are currently on 3.11, which was released 3.5 years ago for mainline Python.

> It is also lagging behind in terms of Python releases.

Which it has always been, especially since Python 3, as anyone who's followed the pypy project in the last decade years is well aware.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#100

Post by fn-mote »

johndough wrote: post #63
toyg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying the last tax that affected you was passed in 2006...

I don't understand. Could you elaborate?

It means there are lots of changes in each “minor” version that the poster is ignoring because they are not personally affected.

Match case and even the walrus operator come to mind.

Post reply on HN