Web2py-3.0

[Dominic König]

Hi everyone--

I would like to share an update/explanation regarding Eden's compatibility
with newer web2py-3.0.

As you will have seen, Eden-6.0 is still stuck with web2py-2.27.1. This has
multiple reasons:

1) All web2py-3.0.x stable releases contain bugs - all of which concerning
PyDAL - and therefore doesn't play nicely with Eden.

It is possible to patch PyDAL, and I have a patched version of web2py-3.0.14
for testing purposes - but that is less than ideal when it comes to pull-
updateable deployments.

2) web2py-3.0 requires Python-3.11 or later. However, there are a number of
mission-critical deployments with major NGOs that are still running on
Debian-11, which has only Python-3.9 - and such deployments are notoriously
slow to upgrade their OS versions out of security concerns and due to the
required downtime.

So we will have to continue to support Python-3.9, and hence web2py-2.27.1
(the last 3.9-compatible release).

3) web2py-3.0 breaks some backwards-compatibility, so we will need to change
some things in Eden in order to make it work with web2py-3.0 - which in turn
would break web2py-2.27.1 compatibility, unless we wrap these changes in a
self-healing proxy class (like S3DAL), and test it thoroughly against both
web2py-versions.

So I have done some of these changes, and also begun some cursory testing
against the patched web2py-3.0.14, which looks promising. I have also proposed
my patch upstream to PyDAL, but not seen any result yet.

---

Bottomline: yes, we going to move to web2py-3.0 at some point during the 6.x
release series. I'm on it, but there are some unresolved issues hold things up
a little longer than usual. Time will solve it, I think.

If anyone wants to help with compatibility testing - let me know, then I can
share my patches with you.

Otherwise please deploy with Debian-12 and Python-3.11 - that is the
recommended target platform for now.

Dominic