On 1 June 2016 at 01:56, Ken Moffat <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 04:30:46PM -0700, Paul Rogers wrote:
>> > e.g. I saw a report on the Mesa list that Python3 will be required >> >> Case in point. I'd like to avoid the necessity of supporting both 2 & >> 3. Sure, I *can*, but it's hardly optimum. >> > > I think we're stuck with both for the moment - except for those > people who use Python for scripting, neither is useful in itself to > an end-user, but both are used by various things which we might > want. Distros such as, ISTR, fedora, and also gentoo, have tried to > move to python3 but a lot still needs 2. If my memory is correct, > Igor tried to move to 3 last year but found things he used which > needed 2. > > And for both python versions, the fun part of system maintenance is > keeping track of which packages installed python modules, so that > you can rebuild those if you have to upgrade that version to a new > minor [ I recall having to upgrade python2 once so that I could > continue to compile firefox on an old system[1], and I think there > have been vulnerabilities since then which were best addressed by > upgrades ]. Whatever the rights and wrongs surrounding the decision to create a language (Python3) that was incompatible with Python2, it is now a fait accompli. To be fair to the Python Community, Python 3 *is* now the default language; Guido van Rossum has said as much. The problem lies with the various package maintainers who still have not upgraded their packages from Python 2 to Python 3, and there are still many of them, so it's a mess. AFAIK, the conversion is not a particularly arduous task; the differences between Python 2 and Python 3 are not as great as many people clearly believe. It seems to me that perhaps the key to unlocking this mess lies with the Distros. Arch Linux has already made Python 3 the default version, but AFAIK Red Hat (and others) have not. At least, the Ansible maintainers are blaming Red Hat for Ansible being stuck with Python 2. Many on the Ansible mailing list have asked for an upgrade to Python 3 but the answer is always that until Red Hat makes Python 3 the default, then Ansible will remain with Python 2; Red Hat being one of Ansible's main customers. But maybe it's just a blame game to justify torpor; who knows? Richard -- http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
