As of 2025-10, Python 3.9 is end of life and does not get upstream support from python.org anymore.

But it might still be in use here and there:

• debian bullseye has py39
• ubuntu 20.04 "focal" has py38 (and py39?)
• other older stable dists

My plan is to remove official py39 support in 1.4-maint branch after borg 1.4.2 release.

I don't think this will cause major issue, because:

• older stable dists usually don't jump onto new borg releases anyway, but rather patch their old versions
• older borg versions, like 1.2.x and 1.4.y (y <= 2) will still support py39.
• even for > 1.4.2, it might be easy to get it working on py39 (just "as is", if you are lucky, or with minor python syntax patches, in case we use something that needed >3.9) - we just won't do testing on py39 anymore.

1.2-maint won't see any new 1.2.x releases.

For master branch (borg2), we already dropped py39 (but borg2 has no non-beta releases yet).