From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Konrad Hinsen Subject: Re: Python 2 retirement =?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=94?= what should Guix do? Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2018 16:13:04 +0200 Message-ID: References: <20180616180118.GA9585@jasmine.lan> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:58141) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fUYQa-00044C-Gk for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 17 Jun 2018 10:13:13 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fUYQV-0005dP-HF for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 17 Jun 2018 10:13:12 -0400 Received: from out2-smtp.messagingengine.com ([66.111.4.26]:58421) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fUYQV-0005d3-B7 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 17 Jun 2018 10:13:07 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20180616180118.GA9585@jasmine.lan> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Leo Famulari , guix-devel@gnu.org Leo Famulari writes: > I wonder, what should Guix do? > > Personally, I think our set of Python packages is relatively hard to > maintain. There is a lot of brittle code in there. I'd be happy to drop > our policy that Python libraries have both Python 2 and 3 packages by > default. I expect Python 2 to be widely used for a few years longer. In my environment (computational chemistry), there is still a lot of Python 2 code in use that is too expensive to port to Python 3 (mainly because of C modules). Most people seem to expect that life will go on like before, not worrying about the end of support for Python 2 at all. The few who do are making plans for running their Python 2 code in sandboxed environments. Guix is one of the best tools to manage this legacy code, so I hope Python 2 will stay in for those packages that need it. But the general policy of having both for all packages can certainly be softened without much loss. Konrad.