Re: Distributions upgrading to Python 3

[Graham Percival]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 05:38:20PM -0700, Patrick McCarty wrote:
> --) Two scripts still have "/usr/bin/python" lines
> (python/auxiliar/manuals_definitions.py, and scripts/build/pytt.py).
> Those should be changed to "@PYTHON@", right?

python/ yes, since it's not something that people call manually.
But stuff in scripts/build/ shouldn't have @PYTHON@, otherwise
it'll bork if you call it manually.

> Would it be feasible to use "#!/usr/bin/env @PYTHON@" or
> "#!/usr/bin/env @TARGET_PYTHON@" for all Python scripts, using the
> basename of the appropriate Python executable in place of the Make
> variables?
> 
> Any thoughts about this?

I absolutely refuse to believe that we're the first project to be
faced with this difficulty.  I also do not believe, with no
disrespect to anybody here, that we are the most
knowledgeable+intelligent people to be considering this problem.

Find out what the python people recommend.  Find out what
distributions recommend.  Find out what packaging guides
recommend.  Somewhere on the internet, there will be a blog post
by Guido van Rossum, or a policy document for ubuntu packagers, or
something like that.  It will contain the perfect solution to "how
should we start our python scripts", or "how can we survive the
transition to python 3", and the like.  Or if there is no perfect
solution, then at least it will outline the flaws and tradeoffs of
each possibility.

Remember the old saying in academia -- "you can save yourself the
burden of spending 3 hours in the library by spending 3 months in
the lab".  Let's not reinvent the wheel here.  Find out what the
experts recommend, then let's do that.

Cheers,
- Graham