Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
The python programming language is going to be releasing a new version sometime around the time of the Fedora 10 release. Unlike past releases, this one will have wide-spread backwards incompatibility in the python language itself. We need to think about how we want to pull the new language into the distribution and porting of existing apps/modules. Here's a proposal to start us off but I hope geppetto (the python maintainer) and ivazquez (who maintains python3.0 packages in his spare time[1]_) will weigh in with their thoughts.
So, while this is a large and incompatible change, there are lots of other large and incompatible changes that we've managed over the years. And in most of those, we've been far better off with actually making a transition rather than trying to keep two different things around.
This is even _more_ true with things which are a framework that lots of other packages provide modules for -- things like apache, perl, python, and more. So in contrast, I think that we should evaluate python 2.6 for Fedora 10 (it seems reasonable, but I will defer to the current python maintainer's judgement :-). And the move to python 3.0 will need to wait until there's either
a) sufficient reason for us to do a lot of legwork to get there or b) enough upstreams are "buying in"
* python3000 modules should have a separate namespace from python2.x modules. The packaging committee will need to decide on that (python3-foo, python3000-foo, python3k-foo are possibilities. python3.0-foo should not be considered as 3.x versions should not have the same backwards incompatibilities that 2.x->3.x has.)
Except that many python modules are just included in with packages or in the same source tree. This then ends up with a need to build multiple versions of python modules and that way lies massive amounts of pain. It was a huge enough pain for just a very small number of modules in the python 1.5 -> python 2 transition. With the vastly greater number of modules these days, it becomes far far more difficult.
* Porting to python3000 will occur at some point but that should be a post-Fedora 10 feature that we decide on after python-3.0 final has been released. We will also need to discuss whether to port our tools piecemeal or altogether at that time and to what extent (if any) we will allow splitting from any upstreams that only support python-2.x.
It's not as simple as that. What happens if (just to make up an example), anaconda and rhpl move to python 3 but no other tools do? Especially given that other tools depend on rhpl. Either a) the other tools have to be ported or b) multiple copies of the same code have to be maintained. The latter is filled with losing. The former is plausible, but it is going to be a big effort and we have to consistently commit to it across the board.
Jeremy -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
