I have recently used the libclang python bindings to write a static code analysis tool. In the course of that project, I noticed that there are no annotations for the Python bindings.
I personally find type annotations very useful, since they help you in detecting many types of errors via type checkers (mostly the stuff Python is bad at due to no static typing) but also with e.g. auto completion, suggestions and hints in your IDE.
Because of this, I’m currently working on adding typing to the point that cindex.py passes a strict mypy check. However, there’s a couple points that I’m unsure about.
For one thing, I didn’t find any information about which versions of Python the bindings are supposed to support, and as such I’m not sure if it’s even possible to use type hints / which features from the typing module I’m allowed to use etc.
Some places need deeper changes than just a simple type annotation to make the type checker accept it, so I’m also wondering if there’s enough interest in these for someone to actually review a change that gets this to pass a strict type-check. Alternatively, one could annotate only the actual “outward” interface of the module, which would need less changes… but might still produce a bunch of typing errors for all the places that weren’t touched for anyone using this.
Anyway, I just want to make sure I don’t put too much work into something that ends up useless because it’s not compatible or something.
At one point, we made a push to move our Python to Python 3, but that was for internal scripts. The libclang Python bindings are a bit different in that those are closer to “user-facing” than our internal stuff. I’d say we should aim for Python 2 and Python 3 support if possible, but I’d say we should bias towards Python 3 if necessary. (No idea how others feel about it, though.)
I think the trick will be finding someone interested and qualified to review those changes. Hopefully someone can volunteer on this thread (I know enough about libclang to help, but I don’t know enough about Python to feel comfortable signing off on the changes).
Ubuntu has dropped it as of 22.10, and Debian has dropped it entirely for all future releases (starting with this year’s 12 “bookworm”), including from unstable itself. Fedora still seems to have it in 38 and Rawhide, and openSUSE still seems to have it in 15.4 Leap and Tumbleweed.
Please just let Python 2 die. It’s not a good use of people’s scarce time to support it. Typing especially (benefits pointed out in the OP) made huge strides in Python in the last few years, and is incompatible with Python 2.
Thanks a lot for all the helpful feedback here! And especially to @Endill for offering to review.
I’ll make sure to test my changes against Python 3.6 specifically, and hope I can provide a patch sometime soon.