[zzzeek]

2to3 isn't perfect but I've made it work for SQLAlchemy and Mako - the Mako port was very easy. SQLAlchemy was trickier, largely because we still support all the way back to Python 2.4 (we're moving to 2.5 for 0.8).

When I wrote Alembic just recently, I ran 2to3 on it and it literally needed two "file()" calls to be changed to "open()" and that's it.

The contradiction in Armin's post is that he starts off with "we don't like Python because its perfect, we like it because it always does a pretty good job, etc. etc.". Aside from Armin's very specific issues with codecs (I've never used codecs that way) and with the filesystem (OK, he's convinced me work is needed there), I don't quite see how 2to3 is any different than "not perfect, but does the job at the end of the day".

Also, we really shouldn't be fixating on 2to3 very much - it is already deprecated. We should be thinking/worrying very, very, much about 3to2. Since we really should be shooting to have our source in all Python 3 within a couple more years.