COMPAT: drop support for python 2.6

[cpcloud]

will close #8760 at same time

The slowest of the slow of Linux distributions (RHEL) has upgraded their version of Python to 2.7. I think if they're happy with not supporting 2.6, then we can be too. Supporting it is not a huge deal, but it would be nice to really encourage people to move forward with upgrading to later versions of Python which would provide the community with momentum towards Python 3. While we can't force everyone to use Python 3, I think dropping support for Python 2.6 is reasonable. The last binary release of Python 2.6 was 2.6.6 and that was in 2010. By now, most people are using python 2.7.

[jreback]

let's wait / defer the decision on this till next version. I don't think this is a problem (until numpy < 1.7)

[cpcloud]

Cool sounds good

[jreback]

any objections to slating this for 0.18.0 (prob next year)

cc @jorisvandenbossche @cpcloud @shoyer @wesm @sinhrks @TomAugspurger

[wesm]

Sounds fine to me.

[jreback]

and conda no longer building for 2.6 (though I can build those as well)

[cpcloud]

Fine by me

On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 1:15 PM Wes McKinney notifications@github.com
wrote:

Sounds fine to me.

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#7718 (comment).

[tacaswell]

As a data point, mpl is dropping support for py2.6 with 1.5/2.0. Both should still work with 2.6, but our 2.1 is going to include things which break on 2.6 (traitlets and ordered dicts).

Sorry to be forcing your hand here a bit.

[jreback]

@tacaswell no, its really that lots of others are dropping this support, e.g. conda builds and such. We don't have to do this, but its been slated for a while.