Default Python version

[corentincarton]

@doc78, would it be possible to update the default environment to use the latest stable Python?

See https://devguide.python.org/versions/, Python 3.8 is not receiving any security updates. I would be safer to move to 3.12, which would give us a few years. Also, we would probably benefit from new features. Following recent tests, it's also getting harder and harder to build a stable environment. Looking at the way we install GDAL could be interesting as well as I believe they made it available on pypi.

[doc78]

I agree, we can add this update to the new release version.

Just an additional note: as we want to be flexible with python versions and packages, to avoid excluding users that for any reason have recent but not latest versions, we can use 3.10 as minimum requirement and at the same time check that everything is running also with 3.12. At least if there is no special reason to prefer (and limit the flexibility) the version 3.12.

[corentincarton]

Thanks! We could also provide stable environments for different versions of python (support all the stable versions in the link above).