[py3porters-devel] PEP 394 in debian? (/usr/bin/python could be python3)

[Scott Kitterman]

On February 20, 2018 3:12:00 AM UTC, Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net> wrote:
>On Sun 2018-02-18 14:15:46 +0000, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>> Switching /usr/bin/python to point at python3 won't happen before
>> python2 is removed from the archive.  I wouldn't worry about it.
>
>I'm not worrying, i'm trying to suggest that this could be a healthy
>way
>for debian to interact with the rest of the python ecosystem.  i've had
>interactions around other (non-debian tools) which ship with a
>/usr/bin/python shebang line and intend that to mean "either python2 or
>python3" in accordance with PEP 394.
>
>I'd generally prefer to be able to install and run those tools locally
>against python3.  At the same time, i'd prefer to not carry local
>patches against these tools that adjust the shebang line or other
>invocations of python.
>
>Even if we don't want to do that in debian directly, It occurs to me
>that it might be possible on a minimal system for an admin to "apt
>purge
>python-minimal" and then manually link /usr/bin/python to python3.
>
>Is there any reason *not* to ask command-line tools that are
>python2-only to ship with a /usr/bin/python2 shebang line in debian and
>to explicitly declare a dependency on python2.7 instead of python?
>
Only that it's a distraction from more important things.  In Debian it doesn't and won't matter, so time spent addressing it is lost to working on other things that are almost certainly more important.

Scott K