RE: [oe-core][PATCH] python3: add ${bindir}/python symlink

[Peter Kjellerstedt <peter.kjellerstedt@axis.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org <openembedded-
> core@lists.openembedded.org> On Behalf Of Alexandre Belloni via
> lists.openembedded.org
> Sent: den 22 november 2022 23:29
> To: Alexander Kanavin <alex.kanavin@gmail.com>
> Cc: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>; Ross Burton
> <Ross.Burton@arm.com>; Khem Raj <raj.khem@gmail.com>; Markus Volk
> <f_l_k@t-online.de>; openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org
> Subject: Re: [oe-core][PATCH] python3: add ${bindir}/python symlink
> 
> On 22/11/2022 19:32:17+0100, Alexander Kanavin wrote:
> > On Tue, 22 Nov 2022 at 19:14, Richard Purdie
> > <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > > Rightly or wrongly, this patch will cause large amounts of pain for
> > > some portion of our userbase and I'm not sure we have enough
> > > justification to do that. That pain wouldn't likely be realised for
> > > some time either :/.
> >
> > I have to point out that meta-python2 hasn't even received a
> > compatibility update for langsdale:
> > https://git.openembedded.org/meta-python2
> >
> > While this might be 'too soon' to conclude that python2 is truly dead,
> > maybe a year (or two, or three) from now it won't be. Fedora has
> > already made the switch, Debian will follow, and honestly, I just
> > can't muster any sympathy for python2 users anymore. You can't push
> > back paying off technical debt forever and expect others to
> > accommodate you.
> >
> > Let me propose this: a PACKAGECONFIG for the python recipe that adds
> > and installs the symlink in a dedicated package. We can keep it off
> > for now, but somewhere down the line we could revisit that against
> > established practice and what PEPs say then.
> >
> 
> I actually like the idea of having a python-is-python3 package so that
> affected recipes could simply add it to their dependencies. That would
> make it explicit that python is not python2.

Please not that in the Debian case, nothing depends on python-is-python3. 
It is only provided so that users can manually install it if they have 
a Python script not provided by Debian that requires it.

And note that Debian also provides a python-is-python2 package, and 
obviously things would eventually fail if packages actually were to 
depend on either as this would open up for conflicts.

Thus all Python scripts in packages provided by Debian are required to 
explicitly specify either python2 or python3 on the shebang line.

> > Alex

//Peter