----- Original Message -----
+1 from me on the suggested changes.
On 15 April 2015 at 02:56, Robert Kuska rkuska@redhat.com wrote:
*{__python} VS /usr/bin/python CONFUSION* Why is value of {__python} being changed and /usr/bin/python (along with python-foo being python2) is untached? I see this as two different situations or two different point of views.
/usr/bin/python is a *user view*, as a user I would expect when I type python that it would fire up python2 interpreter as this is the default behaviour for all(-ArchLinux) distros and also python.org recommendation. Similarly when I type `sudo dnf install python-foo` I would expect to receive python2 version of foo package. This is why we stay with /usr/bin/python pointing to python2 and python-foo to provide python2 version of package. As a user I don't care for macros and their values, they are hidden from me => I am not confused, I get what I expect.
We discussed the future fate of the /usr/bin/python symlink at the language summit (and a little further at the sprints), and it currently seems likely that we're going to go down the path of the Python Launcher for Windows model, and make "python" refer to a configurable shim that:
- Launches an administrator configured Python version by default
- Can be switched to run a different Python via command line options
This is essentially the rubypick model, but the CLI and configuration file format will be defined by CPython upstream rather than by the distro.
It seems that Debian people are already onto something. I just saw this on debian-python ML [1] (where I'm lurking to catch things like this :)) - Robert, perhaps you should get in touch with Geoffrey and talk to him about this? IMO in the end this should end up being a PEP or at least a cross-distro agreed standard. Either way, I think we want to be part of this from the very beginning.
Slavek
Cheers, Nick.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
[1] https://ldpreload.com/blog/usr-bin-python-23