[arch-general] a plea for python 2

[Ray Rashif]

On 15 December 2011 07:44, Thomas Dziedzic <gostrc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Sander Jansen <s.jansen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Thomas Dziedzic <gostrc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
>>>> Am 14.12.2011 23:24, schrieb Evan Martin:
>>>>> What I don't understand is why you're manually patching upstream
>>>>> software to rewrite references from /usr/bin/python to
>>>>> /usr/bin/python2.  This sort of forking is exactly the sort of
>>>>> divergence (like how Ubuntu modified their GTK to add their own
>>>>> specific hooks) that I was fleeing from when I came to Arch.
>>>>
>>>> There's no forking here. Python 2 is end-of-life, python 3 is current.
>>>> Applications that set a 'python' shebang, but require 'python2' are
>>>> *broken*, we *fix* them.
>>>>
>>>
>>> This is how I feel about the current situation also.
>>>
>>> The pep clearly defines that you should only be using python2 or
>>> python3 in your shebangs, and that python should be ideally used only
>>> to invoke interactive sessions.
>>>
>>> The fact that programmers and distro python packagers ignore this is
>>> not our fault.
>>
>> "Until the conventions described in this PEP are more widely adopted,
>> having python invoke python2 will remain the recommended option."
>
> The full quote is:
>
> "More conservative distributions that are less willing to tolerate
> breakage of third party scripts continue to alias it to python2. Until
> the conventions described in this PEP are more widely adopted, having
> python invoke python2 will remain the recommended option."
>
> Also, when do you suppose "widely adopted" will occur? If you leave
> space for interpretation, then expect opinions that don't match yours.
> This is a recommendation and someone is going to have to take the
> first step eventually.
> Here is a metaphor in the spirit of the season:
> Arch is the snowplow that is shoveling the snow to the sides of the
> road to make it easier for other distros to pass.
>
> I see this thread turning into the threads when it was first
> announced, and I refuse to go down that path, again...
>
> Here is the python maintainer's blog post about it:
> http://allanmcrae.com/2011/03/the-python2-pep/
>
> Cheers!

To sum up the two Thomas' replies above (which have been mentioned a
number of times before):

1) Arch faces the pain before anyone else.
2) Arch fixes stuff for real, _not_ "enhances". (which is what you
mean by Ubuntu-like patching)

Using /usr/bin/python is no longer recommended as upstream has
realised the mess they themselves have made. All software developers
who consider themselves up-to-date with technology should adopt these
latest changes, or choose to be backdated.

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