Just read the perennial manylinux PEP. Before I go into my concerns on that, after the requests of
@brettcannon and @sumanah , I will try to create a more specific timeline for us.
Looks like Centos 6 is EOL on November 30th 2020: https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product
Looking at our work on manylinux 2010, many roadblocks we have been facing, preparing toolchains has proved to be around almost a quarters work. Adding the overhead of our big organization, to get projects funded and people working on it, I would say we need the standard implemented by August 2020.
While I like the general outline of the perennial manylinux proposal, I still feel like there are a few gray areas in it. I have commented on one, regarding “any real-world linux environment”, another one is how to avoid bloat. Another one already being discussed is about C++ ABIs.
Such concerns are why I put my support behind manylinux2014 now. I think for the long term perennial manylinux is the way to go, but there are quite a few things to consider when trying to support the vast landscape of linux distributions. And I am nervous that we may not get thing right in haste.
But again, if we think we can get the PEP draft ready this month, and also address the documentation issues as @zwol pointed out, I would be OK with going with the perennial manylinux proposal.