Re: Symlinks to generic names

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au> skribis:

> On Sun, Feb 02, 2014 at 05:42:01PM +0100, Andreas Enge wrote:
>      On Sun, Feb 02, 2014 at 02:40:39PM +0100, John Darrington wrote:
>      > python3 -> python
>      
>      For python, the binary python is provided by python-2.7.6. The binary
>      python3 (and python3.3) is provided by python-3.3.3. And there is
>      python-wrapper, which installs python-3.3.3 and creates symlinks
>      python -> python3 etc..
>      
>      So for python, there is nothing to do - if you need python3, you already
>      have it.
>
> It seems that whilst guix's python2 package installs a link from python2 -> python
> this does not happen for python3.

Actually, in Python 2.x, the binary is called ‘python’; in Python 3, the
binary is called ‘python3’ (these are decisions made by the Python
maintainers, which we just follow.)

For Python 3, we have ‘python3-wrapper’ which provides a symlink to
facilitate things.

> Minimising downstream modifications is certainly a noble goal.  The thing
> is if we refuse to (say) link lex to flex, then every package which calls "lex"
> has to be modified, thus defeating that goal.

Please list packages that need it, thanks.  :-)

Ludo’.