Roadmap

06 Nov 2019

Python 2 reaches end of life on 1 January, 2020, according to PEP 373 and python/devguide#344. Many of our dependencies (notably numpy, see their Plan for dropping Python 2.7 support) have ceased Python 2.7 support in new releases or will also drop Python 2.7 in 2020.

We know that science is rolling slowly and surely some scientific projects will continue with Python 2.7 beyond 2020. MDAnalysis has been supporting Python 2 and Python 3 now for a while. However, given how precious developer time is, we also decided to drop support soon after the official Python 2.7 drop date.

Our plan is to give researchers a stable legacy platform and release MDAnalysis 1.0.0 with full Python 2.7 support and tests. However, no major development will continue in 1.0. Issues will only be fixed and backported on a best-effort basis, simply because there are not enough developers to do this work.

We will then work towards MDAnalysis 2.0.0, which will only support Python 3.

Tentative Roadmap

2020 (1st quarter)

• release 1.0.0 in early 2020 (maybe end of 2019…)
  • 1.x will be the last version of MDAnalysis that fully supports Python 2.7
  • 1.0 will be similar to upcoming 0.21 (i.e., no major annoying API breaks but clean-up and deprecations)
  • development on 1.x will cease with the release of 2.0; we will consider PRs that backport fixes but we will not officially support it after the release of 2.0
• finalize API decisions for 2.0.0

2020 (2nd quarter)

• release 2.0.0
  • officially drop Python 2.7 support
  • support all current Python 3.x releases
  • include larger changes/deprecations (API breaks compared to 1.0.0 if necessary, removal of legacy code, etc)
• code modernization (making use of specific Python 3 constructs) will be ongoing

Comments?

If you have comments or you see problems with this roadmap then please get in touch

• Issue #2303
• Twitter @mdanalysis
• mailing list GitHub Discussions

— @MDAnalysis/coredevs