On Oct 19, 2020, at 14:10, Christopher Chavez wrote:
> So far the versions for Python have been able to compact into two-digit
> strings: e.g. 36 37 38 39. Is the compacted version number for next year's
> Python 3.10 going to be "310"?
>
> If so, there is code in portfiles which requires adjustment. Common example:
>
> set pbranch [string range ${pver} 0 end-1].[string index ${pver} end]
>
> assumes ${pver} is two-digit; setting ${pver} to "310" causes ${pbranch} to
> be set to "31.0" rather than "3.10". (I'd much prefer the inverse approach of
> setting ${pbranch} first, then doing `set pver [join [split ${pbranch} "."]
> ""]`.)
>
> Maybe this convention followed Van Rossum's expectation long ago that Python
> would go directly from 3.9 to 4.0.
The python portgroup contains code for transforming the no-dot form of the
branch (which it calls python.version) into the with-dot form of the branch
(which it calls python.branch). That code currently does not account for a
future 3.10 version but can be fixed in that one place and then benefits all
ports that use that portgroup, provided those ports use those existing
variables. It doesn't help any ports that manually copied the code for setting
such variables.
I agree that it would have been a good idea for the python portgroup to use the
with-dot branch as the one that ports set and compute the no-dot branch, rather
than the other way around. Other portgroups like perl5-1.0 and php-1.1 already
do it that way. We could introduce a new python-1.1 portgroup to fix it, taking
the opportunity to also fix the confusing variable names; it will then be a
long process of moving all ports over to that new portgroup, but that's fine;
the 1.0 and 1.1 portgroups can coexist for as long as is necessary to do the
transition.
Whether we also want to change the portfile names from e.g. python39 to
python3.9 and from py39-foo to py3.9-foo is a separate matter and probably a
much more difficult transition to do. Given how many python module ports there
are and how extensively they're used, we might not want to attempt such a
rename.
