Re: the upcoming Great Python2 Purge™

[Brett Gilio <brettg@posteo.net>]

Leo Famulari writes:

> On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 11:38:12AM +0200, Efraim Flashner wrote:
>> We're now about a year out from the official EOL for python2 (Jan 1,
>> 2020). So far we've been not adding python2 variants of packages that
>> are new unless they're actually needed for something. Do we want to
>> start removing python2 packages when updating other packages if they are
>> leaf packages?
>
> This was previously discussed here:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-06/msg00237.html
>
> That discussion didn't go very far. As you mentioned, the consensus
> seemed to be that we 1) relax the policy of always providing both Python
> 2 and 3 packages and 2) we'll act when we need to.
>
> My opinion is that we should remove Python 2 packages after the upstream
> EOL announcement if they are causing trouble somehow.
>
> But I don't think we need to remove them en masse. We offer many other
> packages that are basically abandoned upstream, so I think it will be
> okay to keep the Python 2 packages as long as there are no bugs or if
> they are maintained somehow.

I think we could also just move them to a different Guix channel
entirely as a sort of legacy-support option. I am almost positive
somebody among us would be willing to maintain them. Could be better
than everybody wanting to maintain their own channel for it.

Also, on a side note, how would this work for the python importers?
Would we stop offering python2 substitutes on the build servers? There
are some other questions here that I think aren't getting addressed.

Brett Gilio