Re: favouring Python3 in the Debian policy

[Ben Finney <ben@benfinney.id.au>]

Matthias Klose <doko@debian.org> writes:

> === modified file 'debian/python-policy.sgml'
> --- debian/python-policy.sgml	2013-05-22 02:12:02 +0000
> +++ debian/python-policy.sgml	2014-05-07 14:34:24 +0000
[…]
> @@ -42,8 +42,7 @@
>  
>        <copyright>
>  	<copyrightsummary>
> -	  Copyright &copy; 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012
> -	  Software in the Public Interest
> +	  Copyright &copy; 1999-2014 Software in the Public Interest
>  	</copyrightsummary>
>  	<p>
>  	  This manual is free software; you can redistribute it and/or

Minor nit: please use “1999–2014” for a numeric range (U+2013 EN DASH).

> @@ -74,6 +73,57 @@
>  
>      <toc detail="sect1">
>  
> +    <chapt id="python3">
> +      <heading>On the move to Python3</heading>
> +	<p>
> +	  Debian currently supports two Python stacks, one for Python2
> +	  and one for Python3.  The long term goal for Debian is to
> +	  reduce this to one stack, dropping the Python2 stack at some
> +	  time.  

Can we converge on a single way to represent the names of these systems
in the document? Currently there seems to be “python3”, “Python3”,
“Python 3” used indiscriminately, without being clear why they would be
spelled differently like that.

I'd prefer to have:

* “Python” as the name of the Python system at no specific version;

* “Python 2” and “Python 3” where the version does matter;

* “python” or “python3” for the name of the runtime interpreter;

* “Python2” and “Python3” never used.

That only applies to the plain text; it doesn't address names in markup,
which are not part of the plain text.

Some different set of names might make sense, but my larger point is
that a policy document should be careful to use terminology
consistently.

>  	<p>
>  	  The set of currently supported python versions can be found in
> -	  <file>/usr/share/python/debian_defaults</file>.  This file is in
> +	  <file>/usr/share/python/debian_defaults</file>, the set of
> +	  currently supported python3 versions can be found
> +	  in <file>/usr/share/python3/debian_defaults</file>.  These
> +	  files are in

This paragraph is always referring to specific major versions, so “The
set of currently supported python versions” also needs to change to “The
set of currently supported Python 2 versions”.


Thanks for tackling this, Matthias.

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Ben Finney