Re: [PATCH] python: prioritize python 3.x over 2.x

Mike Frysinger <[email protected]> Wed, 26 Jan 2022 22:10:21 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.sysutils.automake.patches
Message-ID	<YfINHUaxIMtcbPv7@vapier>

On 26 Jan 2022 10:07, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2022, at 6:37 AM, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > Since Python 2.x went EOL years ago, stop searching for it before
> > any of the Python 3 versions.
> 
> +1
> 
> >    m4_define_default([_AM_PYTHON_INTERPRETER_LIST],
> > -[python python2 python3 dnl
> > +[python python3 dnl
> >   python3.15 python3.14 python3.13 python3.12 python3.11 python3.10 dnl
> >   python3.9 python3.8 python3.7 python3.6 python3.5 python3.4 python3.3 dnl
> >   python3.2 python3.1 python3.0 dnl
> > + python2 dnl
> >   python2.7 python2.6 python2.5 python2.4 python2.3 python2.2 python2.1 dnl
> >   python2.0])
> 
> Please also move the plain "python" command down to the python2 block (right after "python2" would be the best place I think).  Any system on which "python" runs Python 3 is grossly misconfigured.

i don't think that's accurate.  Python PEP-0394 explicitly permits `python` to
be any version, and many distros do just that -- whatever the latest version of
Python 3 installed.  distros that remove `python` entirely as part of Python 2
removal are doing it wrong.

if your argument is that language incompatibilities make supporting Python 2 and
Python 3 with a single interpreter name either difficult or impossible (due to
incompatible syntax changes), i'll remind you that Python 3 is not actually that
much better here.  the Python 3.0 - 3.8 series might have been *mostly* stable
to try and encourage people to migrate off of Python 2.7, there were versions
that changed syntax and broke things, and it's only going to get worse now that
Python 2.7 is "gone".  off the top of my head, Python 3.5 added type hints, and
Python 3.7 added async/await keywords.  both of those completely break in older
versions of Python 3.

so i think it's entirely appropriate that `python` be first, and stay there.
-mike

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