Blog Archive, April 2017

Previously, this blog run on Django 1.8 and Python 3.4, but after a new Django LTS release — 1.11 — I decided that it's time to upgrade this blog to the new Django version and to bump Python version as well. The upgrade process was simple: I created a new virtual environment, installed all the dependencies and pointed Pythonanywhere to this new environment. The blog itself required only one minor change of the sitemap view because URL patterns no longer accept view names as strings, e.g. 'django.contrib.sitemaps.views.sitemap', but require proper callable view objects (previously, both variants were supported).

Now this blog runs on Django 1.11 and Python 3.5 (Pythonanywhere does not provide Python 3.6 yet).

Recently I've got a good news: my pull request on GitHub to Pybind11 project has been accepted by the project maintainers. Pybind11 is a C++ library for exposing C++ code to Python as binary modules. Pybind11 is similar to Boost.Python but it does not require linking against a pre-built library, so it is easier to use.

My pull request is very small: I've added a method to check Python exception types from C++ code more easily. However, I'm not a professional developer and C++ is often considered a "hardcore language", so I'm proud that Pybind11 maintainers have decided that my small contribution is worthy to be included in their project.