[Python-Dev] Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream (original) (raw)

James Y Knight foom at fuhm.net
Wed Mar 2 15:04:51 CET 2011

On Mar 2, 2011, at 8:23 AM, Sandro Tosi wrote:

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 13:56, Piotr Ożarowski <piotr at debian.org> wrote:

[Sandro Tosi, 2011-03-02]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 10:01, Piotr Ożarowski <piotr at debian.org> wrote:

I co-maintain with Matthias a package that provides /usr/bin/python symlink in Debian and I can confirm that it will always point to Python 2.X. We also do not plan to add /usr/bin/python2 symlink (and I guess only accepted PEP can change that)

Can you please explain why you NACK this proposed change? it encourages people to change /usr/bin/python symlink to point to python3.X which I'm strongly against (how can I tell that upstream author meant python3.X and not python2.X without checking the code?) with 'people' do you mean 'users'? if so, isn't this risk already present? If you, user, change the python symlink (provided by python-minimal in Debian) to something else than what's shipped, it's still a local change, and will never be supported; but with python2 Debian is free to decide if python can be pointed to python3, if the time will come.

I suspect he's saying it'd be better if the time didn't come (if so, I'd agree). Python3 is unfortunately a new and incompatible programming language, it makes sense for it to have it have its own interpreter name. Eventually /usr/bin/python might no longer be installed, but that doesn't mean python3 shouldn't simply be called python3 forever.

James

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