[Release] DataStax Python Driver 3.26.0 for Apache Cassandra

[Bret McGuire]

Greetings!  Today we've released Python Driver 3.26.0 for Apache Cassandra!

As discussed in an earlier message the goal of this release is to finally get the set of improvements in master but not yet in an official release out into the wild.  This release also represents the first step in our new version policy of a given release supporting Python runtimes which are not end-of-life at the time of their release.  As an initial step this release will offer official support for Python 3.7 and 3.8; subsequent releases will add official support for newer Python runtimes.

You can find the documentation for this releases here.  The full changelog for this release can be found here.

This release also includes a larger collection of wheel builds than previous releases.  In general we include wheels for most Linux platforms with the following exception:

* Python 3.11 for i686 32-bit platforms (see PYTHON-1336 for more detail)

We also include wheels for most x86_64 OSX platforms, again with one exception:

* Python 3.11 for x86_64 OSX (see PYTHON-1335 for more detail)

Wheels for ARM OSX are not yet supported, although we hope to offer such support once PYTHON-1305 is completed.  We also do not currently have Windows wheels for this release, although we hope to have this resolved once PYTHON-1284 is completed.

Many thanks to all who educated fellow community members, made feature requests, contributed code, wrote documentation, and reported bugs. We encourage you to get involved too:

Discuss the driver and ask questions:
  - python-driver-user mailing list: https://groups.google.com/a/lists.datastax.com/forum/#!forum/python-driver-user
  - Datastax Community: https://community.datastax.com/
Review and contribute source code and documentation:
  - Driver for Apache Cassandra: https://github.com/datastax/python-driver
  - Report issues on JIRA: https://datastax-oss.atlassian.net/browse/PYTHON

Thanks!

- Bret -