On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Bohuslav Kabrda <bkab...@redhat.com> wrote: > - What should user get after using "yum install python"? > There are basically few ways of coping with this: > 1) Just keep doing what we do, eventually far in the future drop "python" > package and never provide it again (= go on only with python3/python4/... > while having "yum install python" do nothing). > 2) Do what is in 1), but when "python" is dropped, use virtual provide (*) > "python" for python3 package, so that "yum install python" installs python3. > 3), 4) Rename python to python2 and {don't add, add} virtual provide "python" > in the same way that is in 1), 2) > 5) Rename python to python2 and python3 to python at one point. This makes > sense to me from the traditional "one version in distro + possibly compat > package shipping the old" approach in Linux, but some say that Python 2 and > Python 3 are just different languages [3] and this should never be done. > All of the approaches have their pros and cons, but generally it is all about > what user should get when he tries to install python - either nothing or > python2 for now and python3 in future - and how we as a distro cope with that > on the technical side (and when we should actually do the switch). > Just as a sidenote, IMO the package that gets installed as "python" (if any) > should point to /usr/bin/python, which makes consider these two points very > closely coupled.
On Gentoo we get python2 and python3 executables and have user-level tools to change what the 'python' symlink points to. I think we default to only having Python 3 installed (and Python 3 is even made the default Python), though it's currently always the case that Python 2 gets pulled in by some core dependencies. Cheers, Dirkjan _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com