Re: /usr/bin/python3 deprecation and enforcing /usr/bin/python

Alexandru Mihail <[email protected]> Wed, 12 Nov 2025 21:22:51 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.python
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

I also object to /usr/bin/python3 deprecation. The astonishing amount of scripts, random utils and stuff I saw running on Debian in the wild (random open source projects, libraries, corporate scripts, etc) is unlikely to change very fast. In fact, it was considered good practice to shebang /usr/bin/python3 (correct me if I'm wrong) in the py2-py3 transition years to force python3 in multipy environments.Keep it for now, it's free, doesn't require any maintenance to keep a
link there. I personally think yanking it out of systems in the near
future will cause sudden and big pain to the people who actually use
Debian in the wild, they don't (unfortunately) always read changes
meticulously. 
If it's really annoying, maybe we emit some warnings at apt upgrade
when upgrading python for quite a while before deleting it, sysadmins
tend to read those a whole lot more than mailing lists and such.
Something like: Use of explicit /usr/bin/python3 in scripts is
deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Please blah blah.
Thanks

> > On 11/12/25 17:13, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 10:49:08AM -0500, Antoine Beaupré wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I think we should do this for Debian 14 (forky), and stop
> > > > shipping
> > > > python3 altogether in Debian 15 (?).
> > > > 
> > > > Thoughts?
> > > 
> > > If possible, please make the transition to be smooth
> > > (i.e. not another gcc-15 or CMake 4).
> > 
> > please stop the ranting.  This has nothing to do on the python ML,
> > and you
> > could raise your concerns in a more civilized way on appropriate
> > channels.
> 
> It was never my intention to rant. My suggestion for this to be as
> smooth as possible has everything to do on the python ML, and afaik I
> have not said anything which could be characterized as "non-
> civilized".
> 
> So please do not overreact.
> 
> Thanks.

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