gh-102871: Remove obsolete browsers from webbrowser

[DBJim]

#102871

[terryjreedy]

Do any of these removals need deprecation?

[sobolevn]

This is literally the first time I hear about most of them.
Even https://browsersl.ist/ and https://caniuse.com/ do not list them anywhere.

I don't think that using Python3.12 and Netscape at the same time is even possible in this reality :)

[cpython-cla-bot]

All commit authors signed the Contributor License Agreement.

[merwok]

I propose to merge this for 3.12 with a note in what’s new and module docs, no deprecation warning, and no backports.

[terryjreedy]

The test failure is a patchcheck whitespace failure in webbrowser.py. James, please run patchcheck in your local repository with the branch checked out. Either make patchcheck on non-windows or python tools/scripts/patchcheck.py on windows. If something is changed, which there should be, commit and push as usual.

[merwok]

Name the removed browsers in the news note, and in a versionchanged note in the module docs.

[bedevere-bot]

A Python core developer has requested some changes be made to your pull request before we can consider merging it. If you could please address their requests along with any other requests in other reviews from core developers that would be appreciated.

Once you have made the requested changes, please leave a comment on this pull request containing the phrase I have made the requested changes; please review again. I will then notify any core developers who have left a review that you're ready for them to take another look at this pull request.

[DBJim]

I have made the requested changes; please review again.

[bedevere-bot]

Thanks for making the requested changes!

@merwok: please review the changes made to this pull request.

[merwok]

I don’t get the note about Firefox older than version 35, can you explain?

[DBJim]

I don’t get the note about Firefox older than version 35, can you explain?

Sure! 'Netscape' class was used as an alias for Firefox until 2015. The current Firefox handling was added to webbrowser in 2015 because support for the -raise, -remote and other arguments used by the 'Netscape' class were dropped from Firefox v36+. The discussion is here: https://bugs.python.org/issue23262

There was discussion to drop the old 'Netscape' class in that issue, but it was decided to keep for backwards compatibility for old browsers which may have still had a user base then. Since it's been another 7 years, I suggest that's no longer true and the class is not required in future versions of Python.

[serhiy-storchaka]

LGTM.

It may be worth to add also a What's New entry (in the "Removed" section).

[vstinner]

This issue broke the Konqueror class which still uses the _remote() method, removed by this PR:

$ ./python -m webbrowser https://www.google.com/
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/vstinner/python/main/Lib/runpy.py", line 198, in _run_module_as_main
    return _run_code(code, main_globals, None,
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/vstinner/python/main/Lib/runpy.py", line 88, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "/home/vstinner/python/main/Lib/webbrowser.py", line 631, in <module>
    main()
  File "/home/vstinner/python/main/Lib/webbrowser.py", line 626, in main
    open(url, new_win)
  File "/home/vstinner/python/main/Lib/webbrowser.py", line 86, in open
    if browser.open(url, new, autoraise):
       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/vstinner/python/main/Lib/webbrowser.py", line 398, in open
    ok = self._remote("LOAD " + url)
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'Konqueror' object has no attribute '_remote'

By the way, webbrowser.Konqueror defines twice its open() method!

[sobolevn]

@vstinner seems like a bad merge conflict resolution, PR is here: #105745