[MlMt] MailMate needs to be updated warning

[Bill Cole]

On 2021-08-20 at 10:38:14 UTC-0400 (Fri, 20 Aug 2021 14:38:14 +0000)
Randy H. Tjahjono <mailmate at lists.freron.com>
is rumored to have said:

> I'm running the Monterey beta, and when launching MailMate I will 
> occasionally get this warning
>
> ![](cid:0B6760AF-8EB7-4FAA-A1AF-E4D1332D3AEB at rhp.tw "MM 
> Warning-GIF.gif")
>
> Clicking on the *Learn More* link takes me to 
> https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/
>
> I'm not sure if this is an issue with Monterey, MailMate, Python, all 
> three, or no issue at all.

All 3.

MM includes a couple of Python scripts (emate and html2text) that are 
written in Python and specify Python 2.7.

Python 2 is an obsolete version of the Python language. The effort to 
get everyone using Python to convert to Python 3 was a 14-year project 
that did not go well. There have been no improvements, security patches, 
or bug tracking for Python 2.7 since 2019. There are still a lot of 
Python 2 scripts embedded in other programs like MM and in production as 
freestanding software like the GNU Mailman v2 instance running this 
mailing list. In the cases where 2->3 conversion is not trivial, it has 
often led developers to completely rewrite programs (e.g Mailman v3) 
from scratch.

Operating systems have finally started to remove Python 2.x packages 
from their official distributions and Apple is one of the last to do so. 
They are apparently including a mechanism for warning users in the 
Monterey beta, which is a good thing.





-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire