[lsb-discuss] Python 3

Dan Harrison nixscripter at gmail.com
Tue Apr 17 22:40:08 UTC 2012


First, a silly question: would this proposal include the interpreter, or
would it also include the innards python library? You mentioned symbols in
modules, but what about the Python core itself? If I wanted to write my own
Python module in C, and compile it to an LSB Python target, what will the
LSB say about the ABI I can expect? Anything?

Second, regarding naming, this is something I have to fight with every day.
On Arch Linux (completely off the LSB radar), they have decided "python"
refers to 3, even though a ton of the Python packages (I would say probably
a slim majority) still use 2. And it drives me up the wall. I suspect it
will the next LSB users also, if their distros are a little bit lazy. So I
would say that, for the sake of backward compatibility of the current spec,
"python" means exactly what it used to mean, and is discouraged (perhaps
even deprecated). Everyone could "python2" and "python3" explicitly from
now on, if the LSB requires both, and that is that.

Third, I would add that there is an easy way to check to see if you are
running Python 2 or 3: in a try-catch block, see if you are able to use the
__future__ mechanism described here: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0236

That's just my $0.02.
--
Dan Harrison
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