[arch-dev-public] Add active Python versions to the repos

[Filipe Laíns]

On Sat, 2020-11-21 at 16:59 +0100, Morten Linderud via arch-dev-public
wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 04:47:27PM +0100, David Runge wrote:
> > On 2020-11-21 14:34:24 (+0000), Filipe Laíns via arch-dev-public
> > wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > I want to propose adding all active Python versions to
> > > [community], not
> > > just the latest one. This would only entail adding the
> > > interpreter
> > > itself, no other packages.
> > > 
> > An alternative (in a per-user setup) can be to use pyenv [1]. It
> > works
> > reasonably well with tox etc. and I have used it in the past
> > successfully to develop against several python interpreter
> > versions.
> 
> I'm personally not very excited for the idea of adding more python
> interpreters.
> I'm a bit concerned that we today say "no packages" but in the future
> we relax a
> bit and end up with python36-$pkgname, as it's the pragmatic option
> as opposed
> to blocking entire rebuilds or package updates.

We can add a guideline blocking this.

> What is the downsides of utilizing something like pyenv? There are
> user
> repositories providing older python interpreters as well if people
> need it.
> 

pyenv forces users to compile the Python interpreter themselves, which
can take a long time with --enable-optimizations.
None of the user repos available builds with optimizations, or has
signed packages AFAIK. Of course they could in the future, but I think
having the packages in the repos is much better in terms of security
and usability. I run one of the user which provides these packages and
I don't see myself fixing any of the issues I pointed out due to
technical limitations.

Cheers,
Filipe Laíns
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