On December 23rd 2021, Python 3.6 will reach its end of life and it will stop being maintained. There will not be any new updates to Python 3.6 after that date, including any bug fixes or security patches. Alpaca will follow accordingly by removing support for Python 3.6 from our Python SDKs, including alpaca-trade-api-python, alpaca-backtrader, and pylivetrader.
This doesn’t mean you can’t continue to use Python 3.6 with our Python packages. However, bugs may appear if you decide to upgrade your package versions, due to lack of Python 3.6 support in newer releases. You’ll need to keep track of SDK dependencies, such as numpy and pandas, on your own in order to support Python 3.6. Looking ahead, Python 3.7’s end of life is on June 27 2023. Until then, we’ll continue to support and maintain our packages for all Python versions 3.7 and above.
Questions & Answers
Q: What does this mean for me?
Python developers will not be receiving any further updates and support for Python 3.6 in future releases of our Python packages.
Q: What do I need to do?
Your existing Python 3.6 projects will continue working with Alpaca’s current python releases. For future releases you might see issues and the need to upgrade your projects if you want to receive the latest updates.
If you are already using Python 3.7+ in your projects, this change will not affect you in any way. You will be able to update your project to our future releases.
Q: What happens next?
We will remove Python 3.6 support from our continuous integration checks on Wednesday December 22nd 2021. Current versions of our packages will continue to work with Python 3.6, but future versions may break.
