layout: post

title: "Deprecating Python 3.4 support"

description: "Starting release 0.55, Python 3.4 support will be deprecated. Support is planned to be removed at the beginning of 2018."

date: 2017-10-06 0:36 +0000

date_formatted: "October 6, 2017"

author: Paulus Schoutsen

author_twitter: balloob

comments: true

categories: Technology

Starting with our next release, 0.55, we will deprecate Python 3.4 support. Current plan is to remove support for Python 3.4 at the beginning of 2018.

Python 3.5 has been released on September 13, 2015. It has since then become the default Python installation on the stable releases of Debian, Ubuntu, Raspbian and Hassbian. Our other own operating system, Hass.io, is more advanced and is already running the greatly improved Python 3.6.

The jump to Python 3.5 as a minimum version is driven by the Home Assistant core, which is based on asyncio. Starting with Python 3.5, asyncio got improved support in the language with dedicated keywords `async` and `await`. As this is the proper way of doing async in Python, we're seeing a move by async libraries to either only support the new syntax from the beginning or dropping support for the Python 3.4 approach. Not moving along means an increased maintenance burden as we cannot use the latest releases of our libraries. Next to that it will prevent our users from being able to leverage the bug fixes and performance improvements that come with Python 3.5.

If you're running a Debian based system, follow [these instructions][dist-upgrade] to upgrade.

[dist-upgrade]: https://linuxconfig.org/raspbian-gnu-linux-upgrade-from-jessie-to-raspbian-stretch-9