As of January 1st, 2020, the Python Software Foundation announced the sunsetting of the Python 2. This means that from that date there will be no further improvements, even if someone were to identify a security risk. Their very strong recommendation is to upgrade to Python 3 as soon as you can.
In light of this, we are announcing the deprecation of our Python 2 base images in balenalib.
When are we doing this?
From July 1st, 2020, all Python 2 balena base images will be deprecated.
What does this mean for you?
If your current balenaCloud project is based on any of our Python 2 base images, we highly recommend you migrate to the equivalent Python 3 base image. Once deprecated, we will no longer be updating the Python 2 base images. They will still exist and work as before, but they will no longer receive security or functional fixes.
What do you need to do? (Important!!)
From July 1st, 2020, the :latest tag for all Python base images will start pointing to Python 3, rather than Python 2. If you are using the :latest tag in any of your projects you should ensure your code runs on Python 3 or pin your base image explicitly to one of the older Python 2 images, for example pinning to balenalib/raspberrypi3-python:2, while you work on updating to Python 3.
We hope this update doesn’t cause too much inconvenience. As always, the balena team are on hand in the forums to answer any questions and to help you transition to Python 3.
