----- Original Message -----
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 04:42:02AM -0400, Bohuslav Kabrda wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > > On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 8:57 AM, Bohuslav Kabrda
> > > <bkabrda(a)redhat.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > I'd like to start a discussion about the release where we
> > > > should
> > > > switch to Python 3. As I have learned recently, Ubuntu 12.10
> > > > will
> > > > have Python 3 as default [1], which makes me a sad panda :(
> > > > We always take pride in being close to upstream and having the
> > > > bleeding edge. Python 3 is stable and more and more libraries
> > > > support it. So I'd like to propose an idea to switch to Python
> > > > 3
> > > > for Fedora 19.
> > >
> > > In which a way do you want to switch to python3?
> > > For me, that means any mention of "python" is synonym to
> > > "python3",
> > > which leads to the question, what is inside a python-foo package?
> > > The module foo, built for python3?
> > >
> >
> > As you say, switching means /usr/bin/python -> /usr/bin/python3.
> > And yes, that is a very valid point about the naming, I think.
> >
> Porting, taking those ports upstream, and even *tiny shudder*
> carrying those
> python3 patches locally for a loooong time, I could support.
>
> Switching /usr/bin/python to point to /usr/bin/python3 I'd be very
> much
> against (at least for several years):
>
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/
>
> has a section that says it may someday be updated to recommend
> changing
> a /usr/bin/python symlink to point at python3. I would wait to make
> the
> link change until that PEP is updated (or many other unix
> distributions are
> also ready to make the switch). Switching the link is a largely
> symbolic
> gesture that creates more work for package maintainers, more work for
> end
> users, and more work for developers (who all have to find uses of
> /usr/bin/python and change them to /usr/bin/python2).
>
Well, my opinion is different on this. The PEP says that bleeding edge distributions may
have python3 as a default. And I like to think of Fedora as bleeding edge.
The only distribution that has switched is arch. When they did there was
a big uproar about how arch was doing something wrong which eventually
resulted in that PEP.
/usr/bin/python is a program that end users depend on being a certain thing
-- it shouldn't be used to set policy. That would be like us deciding we
wanted to switch the default shell from /bin/bash to /bin/zsh and to
implement that policy we were going to symlink /bin/bash to /bin/zsh. Users
wanting /bin/bash would need to update their scripts, tools, and practices
to reference /bin/gnu-bash.
-Toshio