On Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 11:55:30AM -0400, Robert Schweikert wrote:
Python 2 is not going to be around forever and for better or worse in some way or another the interests of openSUSE TW and openSUSE Leap are tied to SLE. SLE has a 10 year life cycle and having Python 2 as the default python interpreter in 2028 is not realistic.
I don't see what the SLE life cycle has to do with this. You need to backport fixes to outdated python code anyway after a couple of years.
Thus at some point the switch needs to be made, which means things will be broken. I hate when things break as much as the next person. But in the end that is the decision the Python community made.
AFAIK the Python community currently wants /usr/bin/python to be python2.
Therefore we have to deal with it sooner or later.
Now lets argue a bit about why it may be a good idea to do in TW what SLE is planning to do. - Lets say TW stays with Python 2 as the default interpreter, i.e. for now we don't break anything. But SLE switches to Python 3 as the default interpreter.
What SLE? SLE-15? SLE-16? Is that already decided?
Then when openSUSE Leap Next is released it will have the default interpreter be Python 3. The result is that the distribution that is being advertised as close to the cutting edge is using an older interpreter than the distribution that is supposed to be somewhat behind in the name of stability. Certainly that will create some kind of perception problem.
Leap should match SLE, no questions.
- It is inevitable that TW will need to switch the default interpreter and thus break things. Therefore we might as well do it now.
That's a pretty weak argument.
- Last but not least there is the human factor. We all know how things go, even if we make a big announcement and say "in one year from today we will switch to Python 3" 98% of the scripts that will break because of this will still be in the same state a year from now because people will not make any changes until things are broken.
It really depends on what's planned for SLE-15. If project management wants /usr/bin/pyhton to be python3 for SLE-15, I'm all for doing the switch right away. If it is just planned for SLE-16, I', for waiting a bit so that 3rd party applications don't break. Cheers, Michael. -- Michael Schroeder mls@suse.de SUSE LINUX GmbH, GF Jeff Hawn, HRB 16746 AG Nuernberg main(_){while(_=~getchar())putchar(~_-1/(~(_|32)/13*2-11)*13);} -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org