On 06/27/2017 05:06 AM, Michael Ströder wrote:
Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar wrote:
I'd like to point to https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/ again...
"""The main barrier to a distribution switching the python command from python2 to python3 isn't breakage within the distribution, but instead breakage of private third party scripts developed by sysadmins and other users. Updating the python command to invoke python3 by default indicates that a distribution is willing to break such scripts with errors that are potentially quite confusing for users that aren't yet familiar with the backwards incompatible changes in Python 3."""
is openSUSE *REALLY* the distro that is willing to break user scripts?
I'd vote against this breakage. Especially because it does not fix a real problem. And surely nobody is willing to maintain thousands of shee-bang patches.
Sorry, but "voting against" is not sufficient, you'll have to offer a viable alternative solution, IMHO. 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. 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. 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. 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. - It is inevitable that TW will need to switch the default interpreter and thus break things. Therefore we might as well do it now. - 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. Am I happy that things will be broken, NO. But given that this is inevitable we might as well get over it, there is no time like the present. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Distinguished Architect LINUX Team Lead Public Cloud rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org