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[Python-Dev] Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Mar 3 00:49:00 CET 2011 
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 3:00 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Am 02.03.2011 23:36, schrieb Jérôme Radix:
>> No, I don't do it now. But taking like granted the fact that 2.x python
>> will be dead in 5 years and that /usr/bin/python will point to python3
>> is, imho, a little too optimistic.
>
> I don't think Steven said, or assumed, a scope of 5 years - more like
> a scope of 30 years. In 30 years, Python 2 will surely be dead (as
> will likely be Python 3).
>
> The defensive programming you promote is likely to fail. Many Python 2
> scripts are syntactically invalid when interpreted as Python 3, so a
> version test won't even be executed.
>
> With separate python2 and python3 executables, people can have scripts
> depend on the right binary.
>
> In interactive mode, I would like to use /usr/bin/python be the
> "current" Python binary always (even when Python 4.6 comes along).
> Python will, interactively, greet me with its version number, and I
> can adjust. So the idea of /usr/bin/python being reserved for Python 2
> strikes me as inconvenient.

+1 on all that.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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