Path: csiph.com!feeder.erje.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!news.roellig-ltd.de!open-news-network.org!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!news.mixmin.net!aioe.org!news.servidellagleba.it!bofh.it!news.nic.it!robomod From: Ben Finney Newsgroups: linux.debian.maint.python Subject: Re: MBF for deprecating Python2 usage Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2017 03:40:02 +0200 Message-ID: References: X-Mailbox-Line: From debian-python-request@lists.debian.org Tue Aug 8 01:30:32 2017 Old-Return-Path: X-Amavis-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.206 tagged_above=-10000 required=5.3 tests=[BAYES_00=-2, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS=0.001, LDO_WHITELIST=-5, RDNS_NONE=0.793] autolearn=no autolearn_force=no X-Policyd-Weight: using cached result; rate:hard: -6.1 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Lines: 33 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux) X-Public-Key-ID: 0xAC128405 X-Public-Key-Fingerprint: 517C F14B B2F3 98B0 CB35 4855 B8B2 4C06 AC12 8405 X-Public-Key-URL: http://www.benfinney.id.au/contact/bfinney-pubkey.asc X-Post-From: Ben Finney Cancel-Lock: sha1:Eg1gTgdBoicgVSXx4+SiCL2+2/8= X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/15111 List-ID: List-URL: List-Archive: https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/85inhyn8zk.fsf@benfinney.id.au Approved: robomod@news.nic.it Organization: linux.* mail to news gateway Sender: robomod@news.nic.it X-Original-Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2017 11:28:31 +1000 X-Original-Message-ID: <85inhyn8zk.fsf@benfinney.id.au> X-Original-References: <3109A909-3338-4717-BFD2-D65E9206FD7F@debian.org> <9614BFBC-E260-48A6-B722-DDD41E715A20@kitterman.com> <92E6FF73-391C-45FE-A213-6AAED284629D@debian.org> <1502142757.2351.35.camel@ghic.org> <690EAE7E-8005-4723-891E-C2E30C3B35AD@debian.org> <85shh3lzp1.fsf@benfinney.id.au> <1502149701.2351.60.camel@ghic.org> X-Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org Xref: csiph.com linux.debian.maint.python:9730 Diane Trout writes: > My suggestion was "the startup banner should print what command to run > to get Python 2." Thanks for the suggestion. I think it's a bad idea. > I was thinking of the case of the end-user trying to follow a Python > tutorial. They'd still need to exit and run the python2 command if they > wanted 2. That's not the issue. The issue is: Invoking ‘python’ today gets an interpereter, Python 2, that will work with some code and not others. It should not tomorrow invoke an incompatible interpreter without *knowing* that the vast majority of scripts in the wild no longer expect Python 2 to come from that command. That day might never come, in which case the ‘python’ command will forever mean Python 2. That is, I'm saying, better than breaking that command in the near or medium future. I'm saying it's a bad idea for ‘python’ tomorrow to get an incompatible intepreter that won't run the same Python code. That interpreter is named ‘python3’ and should never be installed as ‘python’, because ‘python’ is a command that many scripts expect to invoke Python 2. -- \ “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature | `\ cannot be fooled.” —Richard P. Feynman, _Rogers' Commission | _o__) Report into the Challenger Crash_, 1986-06 | Ben Finney