Drop matplotlib support?

[PallHaraldsson]

I can confirm new PythonPlot.jl (which uses matplotlib) works.

Then having support here, even minimal seems redundant. IF it's slowing startup (a big if), then consider just dropping it and update major version (possible to drop more?).

PythonPlot.jl should have downloaded matplotlib automatically. I guess I got an error because of non-clean environment, at least I could easily install it.

Whatever is used for plotting (from Python or not), needs not (should not?) be in the package. And for users who rely on, can use older version of your package.

If you don't want to drop it (or even if) then docs could be improved. I thought about improving them, or manage to follow it, then fix, but will not if it's redundant. At a minimum you may want to point to PythonPlot (not PyPlot).

[It's ok to wait a few days to see if new PR on master helps with startup, before investigating this or other ways for improved startup.]

Off-topic here (only related to new major version if you so choose):

If you do consider a new breaking version change then may too:

version = ">=3.11,<4"

since you download automatically for users. It may not be needed since you get latest anyway 3.11 now. Maybe there's a downside to that, blocking use of some Python packages? At least if/when you users can use 3.11, it's faster and your users will be grateful, and being able to rely on new features:

PEP 654 – Exception Groups and except*

Is that something you need to support somehow from the Julia side?

3.12 is still a year away but 3.12 alpha 2 is out with better error messages. It would be nice if you could easily opt into prereleases but I think not up to you, rather Conda, and I know I can install my own, bypassing Conda. Possibly documenting that such is possible (for e.g. better error messages) is helpful, though I guess mostly if you're developing on the Python side...

Is there something you rely on or want to rely on (or want dropped) from Python?

I see some modules have been dropped in the alpha, and:

The deprecated wstr and wstr_length members of the C implementation of unicode objects were removed, per PEP 623.

It's to pave way for UTF-8 internally in Python (I believe not yet there). I don't think the removal affects you (only Python extension developers), but it would be great if/when Julia and Python can share strings, send back and forth, keeping same encoding. At least then, likely you want a new version number.