refactor(python): drop Python 3.10 support - #810

Motivation

Python 3.10 reached end of life in October 2026, and its share of redisvl downloads has fallen from 6.2% in April 2026 to 1.1% in October 2026 (pypistats.org). The 3.9 drop in #587 shipped at 0.5%. Raising the floor to 3.11 removes a whole resolution fork from the lockfile and lets follow-up work use 3.11-only features such as enum.StrEnum, asyncio.timeout and asyncio.TaskGroup.

Changes

Support floor

pyproject.toml now declares requires-python = ">=3.11,<3.16", drops the 3.10 classifier and removes py310 from black's target versions. The lint and test matrices in .github/workflows/ start at 3.11; the single-version jobs already ran on 3.11 and are unchanged.

Lockfile

uv.lock was re-locked with uv lock and no upgrade flags. The python_full_version < '3.11' fork is gone, taking 31 package versions that only 3.10 installed with it (numpy 2.2.6, scipy 1.15.3, torch 2.14.1, the CUDA 13.0 wheels, tomli and others). No new package version enters the lock. One resolution moves: Python 3.13 now resolves protobuf 6.33.6, grpcio 1.85.1 and grpcio-status 1.85.1, the versions 3.14 and 3.15 already used, instead of 5.29.6, 1.80.0 and 1.71.2. Nothing changes for 3.11, 3.12, 3.14 or 3.15. exceptiongroup and async-timeout stay, because fastmcp-slim needs the first on every version and redis-py needs the second below 3.11.3.

typing.Self

Self now comes from typing rather than typing_extensions, which was never a declared dependency. Methods that return their own class are annotated -> Self: the alternative constructors on IndexSchema, SemanticRouter, MCPSettings, BackupHeader, VectorBackup and MultiWorkerBackupManifest; the pydantic model_validator(mode="after") methods in redisvl/mcp/config.py and redisvl/migration/models.py; and BaseQuery.sort_by and BaseQuery.query. Runtime behaviour is unchanged. Type checkers now infer the subclass in chains such as VectorQuery(...).sort_by(...).

Minor changes

• tests/unit/test_cli_mcp.py drops its sys.version_info monkeypatching, which has been dead since the 3.9 drop removed the version check in redisvl/cli/mcp.py.
• redisvl/version.py drops its Python 3.7 fallback to importlib_metadata, a package RedisVL never declared, so the branch could only raise.
• README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, docs/user_guide/installation.md, docs/user_guide/how_to_guides/mcp.md and the LangCache notebook state 3.11 as the minimum.

Notes

This PR builds on #768 (Python 3.15 support), now merged, and targets main. Python 3.10 is dropped without a deprecation release, as 3.9 was.

Release Notes

Python 3.10 is no longer supported; RedisVL now requires Python 3.11 or later. Installs on Python 3.10 resolve to the last release that supported it.

Reviewer Brief

Start here: uv.lock. The re-lock is the only part of the change that alters what CI and contributors install (published installs resolve from pyproject.toml, not the lock), and its one effect beyond removing 3.10 is that Python 3.13 moves to protobuf 6.33.6 and grpcio 1.85.1.

Where it could fail

• Python 3.13 with redisvl[vertexai] or redisvl[all]: protobuf 6 on 3.13 is new, though 3.14 and 3.15 already run it; check that the Vertex AI vectorizer has no protobuf<6 assumption.
• redisvl/query/query.py:139: BaseQuery.sort_by now returns Self, so a subclass that overrides it with a narrower return type would now fail type-checking; none exists today.

Not verified: live provider APIs on 3.13, where Vertex AI now runs under protobuf 6 (CI's Service Tests run them on 3.11 only); cluster tests; Python 3.11.0 to 3.11.2, where redis-py still pulls in async-timeout.

Beyond CI: a per-version parse of the old and new lockfiles shows the protobuf/grpc move on 3.13 is the only version change for 3.11 and later.

_{Reviewed 036e323f (rebased onto main from fdf0b578, with uv.lock re-locked against main's), fixes in 0d6c0ce1 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5) · lenses: correctness, security, design, tests, docs, Redis behaviour}