Request for comments on scikit-bio: should we drop support for Python 2 in favor of Python 3 only?

scikit-bio is a library implementing core bioinformatics algorithms and data structures, and providing support for bioinformatics data munging. You can learn more about the project by watching Jai Rideout and Evan Bolyen’s 20 minute SciPy 2015 talk.

scikit-bio currently supports Python 2 (i.e., Legacy Python) and Python 3. We’re considering dropping support for Python 2, and would like to get feedback from the community through our Request For Comments (RFC) system.

You can find our RFC on supporting Python 3 only, which describes our motivations and the drawbacks as we see them, here. Let us know what you think by commenting directly on that document. You’ll need a free GitHub account to comment, and can comment here.

Update: Thanks everyone for the feedback on this RFC! scikit-bio will be making the switch to Python 3 only support in 2016 (the 0.5.0 release). We will have one more release with Python 2 and 3 support, 0.4.1, which is currently scheduled for December 2015. You can find full details on this transition in scikit-bio RFC py3-only.