Roadmap

When PodGen reaches a certain point where it has all the features it needs, while still being simple to use, it would not be necessary with further updates… had it not been for changes to PodGen’s dependencies and changes to the overall podcast standards. Luckily, the applications that read podcasts tend to be backwards compatible, in order to support all the old podcasts that are out there.

The current plan for PodGen updates is as follows:

• New minor version: Support for the new Apple Podcast specifications, as much as is possible without breaking backwards compatibility.
• Deprecation warnings for properties and such which will be removed in the next major version.
• New major version: Support for the new Apple Podcast specifications which could not be included earlier due to backwards compatibility, or which have new names or behaviours to simplify the API. Removal of deprecated features.
• New minor versions: Removal of support for Python releases that have passed End of Life (Python 2.7 after January 1st 2020, Python 3.4), allowing for simplifications and use of new features in the code base. Other code and documentation improvements should hopefully stop PodGen from becoming stale and burdensome to maintain.
• Better ways of adding support for RSS features which PodGen itself does not support.

Unlike other libraries with evolving demands, PodGen is expected to stay relatively stable with the occasional update. Changes to the Apple Podcast specifications do not occur particularly often, so PodGen won’t need to change often either.

Since PodGen is an open source project and its maintainer has a limited amount of time to spare, updates may be sporadic. Despite this, please don’t hesitate to report issues or feature requests if there is something that does not work or you feel should be included. The project is used by the Student Radio of Trondheim and will be kept up-to-date with their requirements, though they are not primarily a podcast producer.