[Python-Dev] Python 3 as a Default in Linux Distros (original) (raw)

Stefan Behnel stefan_ml at behnel.de
Wed Jul 24 19:33:42 CEST 2013

Gustavo Carneiro, 24.07.2013 19:16:

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 6:04 PM, Terry Reedy wrote:

On 7/24/2013 5:12 AM, Bohuslav Kabrda wrote:

Hi all, in recent days, there has been a discussion on fedora-devel (see thread [1]) about moving to Python 3 as a default.

Not being a current *nix user, I have no opinion on the specific alternatives. However, I am concerned about newcomers being mis-served by being mislead into thinking that 'Python' is python 2 rather python 3. We see this in some newbie posts on Python list. (This is especially a concern when default Python is still, say, 2.5.) I have no idea, though, how to avoid breaking scripts while directing newcomers in the proper direction. Maybe we could make interactive python2 scripts print a big warning advising users to use python 3 instead of 2, if possible?

Well, what I think could be done is to have the Py2 interpreter output a warning if an unpostfixed shebang is found in an executed script. That would eventually push users into either using the explicit "/usr/bin/env python2", or port to Py3 straight away (or both).

Stefan

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