Post History

A handful of standard library modules either have been, or will soon be, removed from the Python standard library, as part of a general cleanup effort. These modules are seen as out of date and no longer useful, as they serve purposes that are not relevant today. The hope is that removing them will reduce maintenance burden for the core Python development team.

This effort started in Python 3.11 by adding deprecation notices for several modules that will be removed in 3.13. As well, `asynchat` and `asyncore` were removed in 3.12; they had been deprecated since 3.6, but without any concrete timeline for removal.

A complete list of changes, along with the rationale and other details, is given [in PEP 594](https://peps.python.org/pep-0594/). It's worth noting that the original versions of some of these modules date as far back as 1992.

More generally, Python is adopting a consistent policy for removing deprecated functionality after a few minor versions. This, of course, is completely counter to the principles of [semantic versioning (semver)](https://semver.org/) - but Python [was never actually intended to follow that policy](https://web.archive.org/web/20220311211508/https://twitter.com/brettsky/status/1502392549222223872) anyway. To avoid further misunderstandings, there is [currently a plan](https://peps.python.org/pep-2026/) to transition Python to an explicit [calendar versioning (calver)](https://calver.org/) system, which is close to what they've been doing recently anyway.