Current plan for Phoenix

wxPython Dev
1

Hi all,

It’s been a long while since I’ve written any kind of roadmap for Phoenix, so here is one. There’s not much detail (and no dates!) but I thought it would be good to let everybody know what direction I am headed.

  1. Alpha release : This will basically be what is in the current snapshots, and will mainly be a test
    of the start to finish release process, including building release binaries on the buildbot, digitally signing the wheel files, uploading to PyPI, etc. and it is almost ready to go now. (See other email about the name…)

  2. Bug fixing : After any kinks found in the build and release process have been ironed out I intend to focus again on bug fixing and other polishing of the project in the lib,
    docs, demo and etc. This is an area where it is easy to incorporate fixes from others so if you’ve been meaning to look into solving some Phoenix or Py3 issues in the wx.lib, or have been sitting on some fixes you’ve already made, then please get them submitted as PRs. This effort will likely result in some beta builds, published on PyPI, or perhaps we’ll just jump to the release candidate stage, depending on how things go.

  3. Official release: The first official release of Phoenix will be published on PyPI and will be based on the wxWidgets 3.0 branch. I’m not
    shooting for a perfect release here, but rather an “almost everything works” and “applications using Classic can be ported with small to moderate effort” kind of release.

  4. Post-release focus : My intent
    is to then switch my focus over to the wxWidgets 3.1 branch and get all
    the new stuff added to Phoenix, with regular pre-release builds (beta and/or rc). The main intent here is to get caught up to wxWidgets and stay more in-sync with them. Since Phoenix has less dependency on official wxWidgets releases, I expect to be able to make official releases of Phoenix whenever it makes sense to do so.

  5. I have no plans for working on continued releases for Classic. I expect that there are some folks who would prefer to see a Classic wxPython for wxWidgets 3.1 instead of just a Phoenix version, but without Py3 support the value of that option is dwindling fast IMO.

···

–
Robin Dunn

Software Craftsman

http://wxPython.org

2

Hi,

This is really exciting!

Can I suggest inserting into the plan some pre-release announcements to multiple mailing lists / forums, something like this:

Although Phoenix is not yet stable, now is a good time to try it with your wxPython application (and post feedback to the appropriate mailing list or GitHub Issues page) because:

  1. wxPython classic is not being actively developed, whereas Phoenix snapshots are being updated regularly with a focus on fixing bugs and enhancing documentation (not adding major new features which are likely to cause instability).

  2. The wheel installation method has several advantages:

(i) Easy to install automatically for Continuous Integration builds.

Maybe list some open source projects already using Phoenix wheels for CI?

(ii) Installation doesn’t require admin privileges (or tweaking security settings on macOS).

…

  1. Quick responses are expected for bug reports, as seen on the Phoenix GitHub Issues page.

  2. End of life for Python 2 is coming: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/#id2

  3. It should be possible to make your application compatible with both classic and Phoenix and avoid deprecation warnings, e.g.

    if wx.version().startswith(“3.0.3.dev”):

     busyCursor = wx.Cursor(wx.CURSOR_WAIT)

    else:

     busyCursor = wx.StockCursor(wx.CURSOR_WAIT)

Cheers,

James

3

James Wettenhall wrote:

Hi,

This is really exciting!

Can
I suggest inserting into the plan some pre-release announcements to multiple mailing lists / forums, something like this:

Yep, some announcing is planned although I haven’t given much thought yet how far and wide it should be.

  1. It should be possible to make your application compatible with both classic and Phoenix and avoid deprecation warnings,
    e.g.
    if wx.version().startswith(“3.0.3.dev”):
    busyCursor = wx.Cursor(wx.CURSOR_WAIT)

else:

    busyCursor = wx.StockCursor(wx.CURSOR_WAIT)

A little better test, IMO, is

if 'phoenix' in wx.PlatformInfo:...

That makes it very clear that it is not Classic.

···

–
Robin Dunn

Software Craftsman

http://wxPython.org

4

I would like to see better linux support now that wheels are be tinkered with, so sending a email to all the various packagers at various top 100 distros would help alot.

Check https://distrowatch.com/ for a big list of top distros and do a general mailer to them all.

…also reddit would be another way to spread the word. “The front page of the internet”

···

On Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at 1:09:43 AM UTC-5, Robin Dunn wrote:

James Wettenhall wrote:

Hi,

This is really exciting!

Can
I suggest inserting into the plan some pre-release announcements to multiple mailing lists / forums, something like this:

Yep, some announcing is planned although I haven’t given much thought yet how far and wide it should be.