Drop unsupported Python 2.6

[hugovk]

Issue #47 says:

Ansible (one of our largest downstream users on Python versions older than 2.6) is officially making all code only support 2.6 or newer in April 2017.

Well, now Ansible say:

Note
Ansible supports Python version 3.5 and above only.

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/python_3_support.html

So Ansible no longer support Python 2.6. Coupled with the fact Python 2.6 has been EOL since 2013, means it can be dropped. Here are more reasons:

• https://snarky.ca/stop-using-python-2-6/
• http://www.curiousefficiency.org/posts/2015/04/stop-supporting-python26.html
• http://www.python3statement.org
• Current pip 9 deprecates Python 2.6 support, pip 10 won't support it (Drop support for Python 2.6? pypa/pip#3955)
• Not much PyPI traffic (June 2016) Deprecate/Drop Support for Python 3.3? pypa/pip#3796

Oh, and something has caused Python 2.6 builds to fail on Travis CI for latest master, so this of course resolves that too.

[hugovk]

Here's the pip installs for pyyaml from PyPI for the last month -- only 1% for 2.6:

$ pypinfo --percent --pip pyyaml pyversion
python_version percent download_count
-------------- ------- --------------
2.7              89.4%     11,732,683
3.5               3.6%        470,139
3.6               3.3%        430,133
3.4               2.7%        351,614
2.6               1.0%        127,184
3.3               0.1%          7,931
3.7               0.0%          3,638
3.2               0.0%            284
None              0.0%            126
3.1               0.0%              2
2.8               0.0%              2

[bcoca]

@hugovk Ansible has not dropped support for 2.6, the page referenced above is documenting the support for Python 3 versions, not all Python versions.

As of Ansible 2.4, Python2 >=2.6 is supported, it just dropped Python 2.4/2.5 in this version. Python 3 support is >=3.5.

[hugovk]

Right you are, I misread that! Thanks for clearing it up and feel free to close this.

[peterkmurphy]

@sigmavirus24 and @hugovk and @bcoca: Travis seems to be having issues with Python 2.6. Should this issue be re-opened?

[hugovk]

https://travis-ci.org/yaml/pyyaml/jobs/291133194

Wheel has dropped support for Python 2.6, 3.2 and 3.3 because they're EOL.

pypa/wheel@c9e5486
pypa/wheel@c069986

[peterkmurphy]

Well, does that mean that the travis.yml file needs to be edited to remove Python 2.6? (It's actually causing issues with the patch I am working on: #94 )

[hugovk]

If 2.6 is to be dropped, then yes. If not, workarounds are needed to keep the build passing.

It's a question for the maintainers, do they want to do the extra work to keep 2.6 ticking over, which will only become harder, to allow Ansible to keep 2.6 support.

One option is to drop it, and if Ansible still want to have 2.6, they can pin to the last supported pyyaml version which also did do.