[CASSANDRA-19467] Deprecate Python 3.7 and earlier, but allow cqlsh to run with Python 3.6+

• Type: Task
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 5.0, 5.1
• Component/s: Tool/cqlsh
• Change Category: Operability
• Complexity: Normal
• Platform: All

Source Control Link

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/commit/8a33f323508dab061dbebfd168e431cd0e683e01

Test and Documentation Plan

As long as this doesn't break existing CI tooling, it should be fine.

• Assignee: Caleb Rackliffe
• Reporter: Caleb Rackliffe

Authors

Caleb Rackliffe

Reviewers

Brandon Williams, Stefan Miklosovic

• Created: 12/Mar/24 20:50
• Updated: 20/Mar/24 04:51
• Resolved: 20/Mar/24 04:50

Description

In 4.0, we introduced Python 3.6 support. In CASSANDRA-19245, for the 5.0 release, we dropped Python 3.6 and 3.7 support since Python 3.8 was the minimum supported version for version 3.29.0 of the Python driver, which we needed to support vectors. Unfortunately, that may break existing users of RHEL 7, which natively only supports Python 3.6.

We should deprecate Python 3.6-3.7 (which are all either EOL or will be soon) and mention this in NEWS.txt/appropriate warnings at cqlsh startup, but we don't need to have cqlsh refuse to start entirely with 3.6-3.7 until our 6.0 release.