STINNER Victor <victor.stin...@gmail.com> added the comment:

Ned Deily: "I don't think we should be adding this platform-version-specific 
code unless we are going to fully support that particular platform and version."

I know the theory and I know the practice :-)

I started to list platforms that are "supported" by Python, with various 
support levels:
http://vstinner.readthedocs.io/cpython.html#supported-platforms

For example, Linux has an excellent support, whereas OpenBSD is more on the 
"best effort" side. "grep OpenBSD" in CPython shows me at least 51 lines of 
code, whereas OpenBSD has no buildbot and no dedicated developer to handle 
OpenBSD specific issues. For example, test_crypt is broken since at least 2 
years on OpenBSD, as many test_socket tests.

For OpenBSD, IMHO it's ok to have a best effort support, basically apply 
proposed patches.

For Android, the situation is somehow different. There are more and more people 
working on supporting officially Python on Android, like Xavier de Gaye and me 
who are core developers. Xavier is working on that for 2 years, and IMHO the 
port is done at 95%. The last part is just to setup a buildbot for Android API 
24.

The question is the added maintenance cost of Android API 19 #ifdef code, 
compared to pain of building Python on Android.

Technically, it should be possible to setup a buildbot for Android API 19, but 
only with a subset of tests. Either explicitly only run a subset of tests on 
this hypothetic buildbot, or even modify the Python test suite to skip some 
tests on Android API 19. While I expect a few patches for fix Python 
compilation on Android API 19, I do expect a lot of @skipIf() in tests, since 
API 19 has many broken or missing features. The thing is that most people don't 
care of these missing or broken features, it's not an issue for most 
applications on Android.

Note: Kivy is using Python on Android for years, but they use CrystaX NDK and 
not Google NDK. This issue is about supporting Google NDK: have the maximum 
compatibility.

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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue32654>
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