Fedora mulls its "python" version

Posted Jul 4, 2019 10:59 UTC (Thu) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207)
In reply to: Fedora mulls its "python" version by dezgeg
Parent article: Fedora mulls its "python" version

On my systems I've had "python" point to the latest python since around python 3.3 or 3.4, so about 4 to 5 years.

Yes, there's the occasional "/usr/bin/python" bangline that actually needs python 2.7, but IMHO that's really an issue with that package rather than the underlying OS, and thankfully it's easy to fix either locally or upstream.

When you ask for unversioned "foo", you get the latest installed "foo". If there are multiple versions of "foo" in the wild, you can either be compatible with a range of versions, or ask for a specific version. That's a pretty basic principle of version handling, I find it strange that it should somehow not apply to python.

to post comments

Fedora mulls its "python" version

Posted Jul 4, 2019 21:23 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> When you ask for unversioned "foo", you get the latest installed "foo". If there are multiple versions of "foo" in the wild, you can either be compatible with a range of versions, or ask for a specific version. That's a pretty basic principle of version handling, I find it strange that it should somehow not apply to python.

Simply because some people expect(ed) no major revision ever and backward compatibility forever. There's no /bin/sh2 for instance and I bet there'll never be. Even if you don't agree it's understandable. BTW I realize /bin/sh2 is comparing apples to oranges a bit but that's not me doing the comparison, you get the idea and you may even find better examples.

Now that python3 is out and not backward compatible, some people still try to ignore that new version 3 thing and still cling to the "python == python2" backward compatibility idea. "If it ain't broke don't fix it"

So the validity of the "python -> python2" request relies entirely on how long python2 will be supported. Upstream but not just.