[aur-general] [arch-dev-public] Python-3.x transition with python-2.7 update

[Lukáš Jirkovský]

> Just to clarify why this _is_ happening.
>
> python-2.7 will enable USC4 (UTF8) and will not enable the usual stupid hack
> of including the previous pythons include path (the past has shown that this
> breaks too much).  So ~500 out of the 518 packages are going to need to be
> rebuilt anyway...  I think this is a major point people are missing.
>
> So the choice is:
>
> 1) massive rebuild now _and_ even more massive rebuild later when python3 is
> more widely used with lots of package renames (python3-foo would need
> renamed python-foo and python-foo would become python2-foo).  We actually
> can not handle that dual rename with provides/replaces/conflicts....
>
> 2) one massive rebuild allowing the packages to gradually transition their
> packages to python3. As in the wiki, there will be no forced package
> renaming (let the maintainers introduce a python2-foo package only if they
> want to supply a python2 and python3 version) but the description should be
> updated to say python2.
>
> #1 is completely crazy and can not be done cleanly on a rolling release
> distro.  #2 is slightly crazy and works fine (one of my installs underwent
> this conversion).
>
> This has been in planning for over a year.  I have trialled various ways of
> achieving this transition over the last year and have concluded that doing
> it with the python-2.7 release is optimal because:
>  - we are doing most of the rebuilds anyway
>  - it is early enough that our repo is not filled with python3-foo packages
>  - most major python projects have basic python3 support in their
> developmental code or are working on it (see the number of GSoC projects
> doing this transition....) so we will see python3 packages soon.
>
> I am not delaying the inevitable, especially when the delay will hurt us
> more in the long run.
>
> Allan
>
>
>

Hello Allan,
I know that I'm just a regular user but I'd like to express my opinion
too. I think the transition should be done when most modules and
applications support Python 3. I'd not be surprised if the transition
of majority of modules would take several years. By that time there
may be a way how to do a dual rename.

Lukas