On 28.6.2017 10:37, Michael Schroeder wrote:
On Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 03:26:12PM +0200, jan matejek wrote:
* /usr/bin/python will be switched to point to /usr/bin/python3. Other unversioned python binaries will also be switched.
Hmm, my impression was that the python folks recommend that /usr/bin/python stays python2 for the time being, so that 3rd party applications won't break. See PEP 394. Has that changed?
Ah, the dreaded PEP 394. All of you who point to this are right, of course. I suppose we will keep /usr/bin/python pointed to python2 for the time being. On the other hand, the PEP was last touched in 2014 -- IIUC upstream devs themselves are reluctant to touch it because it's such an obvious can of worms. I expect this recommendation to change during 2018, possibly sooner. It seems sensible to me instead to change /usr/bin/python to an alternative, with python3 on low priority at first and switching to higher priority if the recommendation changes. There is still the potential to cause confusion on (new) installations that don't contain python2 -- if such user downloads a script from somewhere, that script might be broken. OTOH, not doing the alternative would mean that "python" command doesn't work at all, which seems worse to me. regards m.