[lsb-discuss] Python 3

Jeff Licquia licquia at linuxfoundation.org
Tue Apr 17 23:12:00 UTC 2012


On 04/17/2012 06:40 PM, Dan Harrison wrote:
> 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?

Historically, none of the scripting languages have been willing to nail
down a C API enough for our purposes.  I'm expecting this to not have
changed recently.

> 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.

Completely off-the-cuff, without serious consideration: I'm expecting
that we will end up adding "python2" as part of the Python 2 spec,
requiring "python3" for the Python 3 spec, and deprecating "python".
That would leave us free to drop "python" completely at the right time.
 So an LSB-compliant Python script would have to choose.

> 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

Thanks!  That might become useful at some point.  We could, for example,
require that scripts that use "python" as their interpreter make use of
something like that.
-- 
Jeff Licquia
The Linux Foundation
+1 (317) 915-7441
licquia at linuxfoundation.org

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