October 2021 Release

[uranusjr]

Tracking issue for pip 21.3.

Anyone volunteers to be the release manager @pypa/pip-committers?

[sbidoul]

I can not be the release manager for this one: October being the month of the annual Odoo release I'll be too busy in the Odoo community. I may take January or April.

I'll be around to help, and at least handle any issues related to editables, though.

[pfmoore]

I might be able to make time for this, but only if it's a relatively routine release. I definitely won't be able to support multiple followup bugfix releases, so if we aren't OK with taking a hard line with "it'll be sorted in 22.1 and not before", then I'd rather not take this on. IMO, we've got into a habit of releasing too many bugfix releases, and it's not practical to sustain given the level of resource we have.

Are we comfortable with a release on a weekend early in Oct, shipped from whatever is on main at that point, with no commitment to bugfix releases for anything beyond complete showstoppers?

[pradyunsg]

I'm happy to pick up the baton for this time around, given that everyone else has limited availability. :)

I expect there to be a bunch of activity and fallout in this release, since we're going to ship in-tree-build-by-default, will likely try to ship editables support, and have a bunch of removals (there's a few gone_in="21.3" deprecations) as well.

[pfmoore]

OK, cool. I still think we should as a matter of principle try to cut back on the number of bugfix releases we do. Either that, or we may start to find that a 3-month release cycle isn't sustainable (we've barely finished doing 21.2 bugfix releases and we're starting on 21.3).

Maybe we need to have a separate issue to review our release policy?

[pradyunsg]

Maybe we need to have a separate issue to review our release policy?

I'm ambivalent. This works, so does a separate issue. :)

I still think we should as a matter of principle try to cut back on the number of bugfix releases we do. Either that, or we may start to find that a 3-month release cycle isn't sustainable

I tend to agree.

FWIW, I'm also fine with deferring that decision to whomever is cutting the releases. I personally prefer to keeping the issue open as short as possible, actually getting the first release on a week day in the first half of the month and so on -- all of which was tricky with the resolver rollout. And I was full-time working on pip in that period. :)

Anyway, for 21.2, we had a whole bunch of follow ups on the sysconfig <-> distutils migration and the resolver -- but the issue stayed open for quite a while after the final release "just in case", which... meh, it's fine but we can also get away with not doing that.

[uranusjr]

I think the sysconfig thing needs to stay open for a while since there are still some obscure issues popping up once in a while. Or alternatively, since we’ve already committed to the switch in 3.10 and those cases are obscure anyway, we can completely silence the warning in 21.3 and see what happens after 3.10.

[pradyunsg]

but the issue stayed open for quite a while after the final release "just in case"

I was referring to the release issue, not the sysconfig migration-related reporting location. :)

And, definitely agree that we should keep the warnings around for a while. Ambivalent on what to do for 3.10+ -- I'm inclined to keep them as-is, until we drop distutils entirely from 3.12. 🤷🏽

[pradyunsg]

Alrighty, two release blockers left:

• A decently important resolver improvement.
• Dropping a deprecated items
  • --build-dir
  • sdist reinstall behaviour

Looks like they're all tasks I ended up picking up, so if someone wants to help out with the reviews of my PRs or the resolvelib side of things, that'd be nice. 😅

[pradyunsg]

Alrighty. Blocked on one last improvement: #10481.

And assuming that'll land, I'll cut a release today (if it happens soon enough) / tomorrow / early next week.

[pradyunsg]

And... all blockers are resolved.

I intend to cut the release 6:30pm UK time on Monday, Oct 11.

[pradyunsg]

21.3 is released!

• Uploaded on PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/pip/21.3/
• Updated get-pip.py: Update to 21.3 get-pip#131
• Gonna go and make the announcements for the release now. :)

[uranusjr]

How about CPython, or should we wait a while to make sure there are no urgent bugs?

[pradyunsg]

Well, if we had urgent bugs, we would've seen an issue about it already. :P

None the less, I'll do the CPython PR after work tomorrow.

[pradyunsg]

One bugfix to go!

None the less, I'll do the CPython PR after work tomorrow.

Haven't done this, since we broke editable installs. 😅

[pradyunsg]

Ahoy folks -- consider main open for development. I'll cherry pick the merged PRs in the 21.3.1 milestone, for making the release.

[pradyunsg]

Alright. Will cut 21.3.1 today.

Thanks @sbidoul and @uranusjr for picking up the editable installs issue and driving it to completion. ^.^

[pradyunsg]

And... it's online.

• https://pypi.org/project/pip/21.3.1/
• Update to 21.3.1 get-pip#132

I'll file a PR against CPython in a few minutes.

---

Unless there's a show stopper issue over the weekend, I expect this to be the final pip release for this year. :)

[pradyunsg]

And, that's a wrap for 21.3.

See y'all next year; unless I get an email from security@python.org. :)