[arch-general] a plea for python 2

[Angel Velásquez]

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On 14/12/11 19:24, Evan Martin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm a recent Arch user, a refugee from Ubuntu.  I was attracted to 
> Arch because I was tired of Ubuntu forcing their new software on me
> -- it seemed the Arch way was to allow you to use bleeding edge if
> you wanted it, but to not fork upstream.
> 
> So it was with some surprise that I discovered that Arch made 
> /usr/bin/python point to something other than Python 2.  This
> differs from every other system (not only other Linuxes, but also
> [as I learned from bug reports I received] OS X and even python.exe
> on Windows).
> 

Hi Evan,

Welcome to Arch Linux, I don't know why many Ubuntu users are coming
here just directly, makes me wonder what we can be a "solution" for
"problems" for Ubuntu users.


> I appreciate that y'all want to use the bleeding edge, and it 
> completely consistent with my understanding of Arch that you would 
> only provide Python 3 by default as well as write your system
> scripts use Python 3.  (I write this mail with some trepidation as
> I fear a response like "STFU noob Arch is bleeding edge", which is 
> emphatically not a response to the issue I'm actually raising.)
> 

Well in the FOSS World that kind of responses are known, but your mail
seems decent to reply you that.


> 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.  :( 
> You can see in the references below that it appears this is 
> contrary to how upstream thinks it should work.
> 

Not necessary, you will see some people posting you some pep links
about python and pytho3

> It means that I can't download any random project (such as
> Chromium) and build it without first applying Arch-specific
> patches.  And upstreams like Chromium can't change to support
> Arch's divergence without breaking their code on non-Arch systems.
> 

There are some apps that you will have to patch in order to work with
any distro non-specified by them, I can remember patching oracle-xe
like 4 or 6 years ago, cheating the installer with some Red Hat path
in order to install. That is not our fault obviously.

> As a software developer, I am now getting contacted by users where
> my software doesn't work on Arch.  I even applied a patch submitted
> by an Arch user to make my code use "python2" only to discover it
> broke my software on Mac and Windows.
> 
> So my questions for you are
> 
> 1) Is it intentional that I am unable to use software from
> upstream like Django unmodified?  Am I expected to only install
> software from the Arch repositories, where it has been patched by
> Arch devs to work on Arch? (See below for more on Django.)
> 

As a python developer i wonder why you don't use virtualenv [1]?
virtualenv will solve you many problems, not only in Arch, for your
development work with out-of-date or too updated python and libraries,
after do the hello world, and run the pep8 the next step for a python
developer should be to use virtualenv, in order to have best practices.


> 2) Should I change the software I write to attempt to detect when
> I'm on an Arch system and adjust scripts/etc. accordingly? (I can't
> just "fix it" because there is no /usr/bin/python2 on existing
> systems like Macs.)

Again use virtualenvs [1] for your python development

[1] http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv

- -- 
Angel Velásquez
angvp @ irc.freenode.net
Arch Linux Developer / Trusted User
Linux Counter: #359909
http://www.angvp.com
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