The Python Clock Has Almost Reached Zero

By Jack Wallen

Python 2 is about to reach its end of life.

As of January 1, 2020, Python 2 will reach its end of life. Originally an official date wasn’t set, but that has changed to a hard and fast deadline. There’s even a countdown clock to tick away the days, hours, minutes, and seconds before we say goodbye to Python 2.

What does this mean? It means a number of critical Python projects will stop supporting version 2 and developers must begin the migration to Python 3 as soon as possible. However, there’s a catch. If you get Python from the Ubuntu repositories (for either 16.04 or 18.04), Python 2 will continue to be supported for the lifetime of those releases (regardless of the upstream status of the Python packages). This is due to Python being included in the Main repository for all Ubuntu releases (and derivatives using the same repositories), prior to 19.10.

For all developers who depend upon Python, an official porting guide has been released for the running of Python 2 code in Python 3. This is crucial, because if your project uses Python 2, it may no longer function properly after January 1, 2020. So porting from Python 2 to Python 3 should be considered a must. To find out what projects have pledged to end support for Python 2, visit the official pledge site.