On 06/28/2017 12:05 PM, Michael Schroeder wrote:
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.
Well, in 2 years 9 months and 14 days [1] Python 2 will no longer be maintained upstream. This would imply that if SLE sticks with Python 2 as the default interpreter SUSE would be maintaining, on their own, Python 2 for roughly 9 years. I'd say that is unrealistic and thus it is a pretty good bet that SLE 15 will have Python 3 as the default interpreter. I already eluded to what that implies w.r.t the relation between TW and Leap.
You need to backport fixes to outdated python code anyway after a couple of years.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.
Ah yes of course, the PEP. Well what if that pep changes in 2 years 9 months and 13 days, can we then switch everything overnight? And probably most importantly will all those scripts that would be broken if we switch now be fixed? I'd say the answer to both questions is NO. So, IMHO it is prudent to be pragmatic and give people a reasonably long runway. Switch the default while we still provide the safety blanket of /usr/bin/python2. If we switch when there is no safety blanket it is worse.
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?
See above, SLE-15 yes. Given the upstream timeline [1] how would one realistically expect SUSE as a business to support Python 2 on its own with no help from upstream for roughly 9 years? Later, Robert [1] https://pythonclock.org/ -- 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